Re: KVM usability

Pekka Enberg
2010-03-07T09:56:28Z

Hi Avi,

(slightly off-topic)

On Sun, Mar 7, 2010 at 11:35 AM, Avi Kivity <avi@redhat.com> wrote:
> perf really is wonderful, but to be really competitive, and usable to more
> developers, it needs to be in a graphical environment.  I want 'perf report'
> output to start out collapsed and drill down by clicking on a tree widget.
>  Clicking on a function name opens its definition.  'perf annotate' should
> display annotations on my editor window, not in a pager.  I should be able
> to check events on a list, not using 'perf list'.

People keep bringing this up but I don't quite agree. Mac OS X has
"shark" which is pretty much what you describe above. However, having
used both, I prefer perf's simple UI for two reasons: it's much easier
to automate perf commands and text-based reports are superior for
sharing results (and keeping track of results when doing performance
optimizations).

That said, AFAICT, it should be pretty simple to implement a
shark-like UI with GTK as current perf code is pretty good fit for
that. I've pondered about doing that myself but quite frankly, I don't
see any big gains in that.

Pekka