Re: [PATCH 0/2] perf: add sort by inclusive time functionality (v2)

[Arun Sharma <asharma@fb.com>]

On 3/15/12 7:50 AM, Frederic Weisbecker wrote:

>> AFAIK, "sort" here means how perf identifies a sample event from
>> others: "comm" will collect samples have same pid/comm, then "dso"
>> will group samples belong to same library, and "symbol" will group
>> again samples have same symbol name. This is what default sort order
>> (comm,dso,symbol) does.
>
> Right this is about how we group the events into histograms.
> If you sort by dso, you'll have one histogram per dso and events
> will be added to the histogram matching their dso.
>
> Multiple sorting does the same with an "AND" between sort entries.
> If you sort by dso,pid, you'll have one histogram per possible couple
> of (dso,pid).
>
> Say you have dso1, dso2 and pid1 and pid2, then you get 4 possible histograms:
> (dso1,pid1), (dso1,pid2), (dso2,pid1), (dso2,pid2)
> ...assuming that over your events you have all these combinations.
>
> So this is how we group samples into histograms.

Agreed. It's a different sort order, but not necessarily a different 
sort dimension. I'm thinking "group by" vs "order by" in SQL here.

Re: adding a new top level flag, struct option options[] in 
builtin-report.c looks busy (especially for short options. Eg: -i is 
already taken).

I can see parallels between this and sort__branch_mode. Stephane: what 
do you think about putting this in a different namespace?

--sort-mode branch (sort__branch_mode)
--sort-mode inclusive (sort__inclusive_mode)

  -Arun