Re: [PATCH v3 2/4] tracing/user_events: Introduce multi-format events

Beau Belgrave
2024-02-21T16:53:49Z

On Wed, Feb 21, 2024 at 10:21:04AM -0500, Steven Rostedt wrote:
> On Wed, 14 Feb 2024 17:50:44 +0000
> Beau Belgrave <beaub@linux.microsoft.com> wrote:
>
> > Currently user_events supports 1 event with the same name and must have
> > the exact same format when referenced by multiple programs. This opens
> > an opportunity for malicous or poorly thought through programs to
> > create events that others use with different formats. Another scenario
> > is user programs wishing to use the same event name but add more fields
> > later when the software updates. Various versions of a program may be
> > running side-by-side, which is prevented by the current single format
> > requirement.
> >
> > Add a new register flag (USER_EVENT_REG_MULTI_FORMAT) which indicates
> > the user program wishes to use the same user_event name, but may have
> > several different formats of the event in the future. When this flag is
>
> "of the event in the future." Does it have to be in the future? Is there
> use case where an application might legitimately want the same event name
> with different formats?
>

You're right, our use cases are mostly around future facing/compat.
There are valid cases where you just want several different formats with
the same name.

I'll drop the "in the future", so it'll just be "several different
formats".

Thanks,
-Beau

> -- Steve
>
> > used, create the underlying tracepoint backing the user_event with a
> > unique name per-version of the format. It's important that existing ABI
> > users do not get this logic automatically, even if one of the multi
> > format events matches the format. This ensures existing programs that
> > create events and assume the tracepoint name will match exactly continue
> > to work as expected. Add logic to only check multi-format events with
> > other multi-format events and single-format events to only check
> > single-format events during find.
> >