Re: KVM usability

Avi Kivity
2010-03-07T19:05:39Z

On 03/07/2010 08:53 PM, Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo wrote:
>>> Do you really think that more kernel developers would use perf more
>>> frequently if it had some GUI?
>>>
>> Not much. Is perf's target kernel developers exclusively? Who are
>> we writing this kernel for?
>>
> No, we aren't writing this tool only for kernel developers exclusively,
> but that wasn't my question, it was badly formulated, sorry, I shouldn't
> have included "kernel" in it :-\
>

In this case, I will reformulate my answer. Very much.

>> Even for kernel developers there are advantages in a GUI, namely
>> that features are easily discovered, the amount of information is
>> easily controlled, and in that you can interact (not redo everything
>> from scratch every time you want to change something). The
>> difference between a curses based tool and a true GUI are minimal
>> for this audience.
>>
> Ok, I agree with you about easier discoverability of features, path
> shortened from report to annotate to starting the editor right at the
> line where some event of interest happened,

Another path is browse some function, start profiling, see perf data
fill up in the margin. Or, jump to callers. etc. You need an
integrated browser for that (or an emacs perf mode).

> will try to keep the
> routines not much coupled with ncurses, but definetely ncurses will be
> the first step.
>

Great. ncurses is certainly much easier to experiment with and will
likely provide useful experience.

--
Do not meddle in the internals of kernels, for they are subtle and quick to panic.