Re: [PATCH 0/2][RFC] Add SWIG Bindings to libcpupower

[Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>]

On Thu, Aug 01, 2024 at 05:24:20PM -0400, John B. Wyatt IV wrote:
> > On 7/24/24 16:11, John B. Wyatt IV wrote:
> > > SWIG is a tool packaged in Fedora and other distros that can generate
> > > bindings from C and C++ code for several languages including Python,
> > > Perl, and Go. We at Red Hat are interested in adding binding support to
> > > libcpupower so Python tools like rteval or tuned can make easy use of it.
> > > 
> > 
> > Can you elaborate on the use-case and what rteval currently does and
> > how it could benefit from using libcpupower with the bindings?
> 
> rteval is a Python program used to measure realtime performance. We wanted to
> test the effect of enabling some levels of idle-stat to see how it affects
> latency, and didn't want to reinvent the wheel. We thought that the Python
> bindings could be useful to other people as well who might want to call
> cpupower too from Python. I did some testing and was able to achieve this with
> SWIG. We sent the patchset to see what folks thought about this.

Is this going to require a built-time dependency on SWIG?  If not, when
would it be run, and who will be in charge of running it and updating
the bindings?

And finally, why do we need these at all?  You are saying these are new
tests that external tools will be using, but why, if external tools are
required to run them, are they needed in the kernel tree at all?  Why
isn't this just another external test-suite that people who care about
measuring this type of thing going to just run on their own if desired?

thanks,

greg k-h