Re: Kernel marker has no performance impact on ia64.

[Masami Hiramatsu <mhiramat@redhat.com>]

Hi Peter and Mathieu,

Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> On Wed, 2008-06-04 at 19:22 -0400, Mathieu Desnoyers wrote:
>> * Peter Zijlstra (peterz@infradead.org) wrote:
> 
>>> So are you proposing something like:
>>>
>>> static inline void 
>>> trace_sched_switch(struct task_struct *prev, struct task_struct *next)
>>> {
>>> 	trace_mark(sched_switch, prev, next);
>>> }
>>>
>> Not exactly. Something more along the lines of
>>
>> static inline void 
>> trace_sched_switch(struct task_struct *prev, struct task_struct *next)
>> {
>>   /* Internal tracers. */
>>   ftrace_sched_switch(prev, next);
>>   othertracer_sched_switch(prev, next);
>>   /*
>>    * System-wide tracing. Useful information is exported here.
>>    * Probes connecting to these markers are expected to only use the
>>    * information provided to them for data collection purpose. Type
>>    * casting pointers is discouraged.
>>    */
>> 	trace_mark(kernel_sched_switch, "prev_pid %d next_pid %d prev_state %ld",
>>     prev->pid, next->pid, prev->state);
>> }
> 
> Advantage of my method would be that ftrace (and othertracer) can use
> the same marker and doesn't need yet another hoook.

If so, I'd like to suggest below changes,

- introduce below macro in marker.h

#define DEFINE_TRACE(name, vargs, args...)	\
static inline void trace_##name vargs		\
{						\
	trace_mark(name, #vargs, ##args);	\
}

- remove __marker_check_format from __trace_mark
- and write a definition in sched_trace.h

DEFINE_TRACE(sched_switch, (struct task_struct *prev, struct task_struct *next),
	     prev, next);

Thus, we can remove fmt string and also ensure the type checking, because;
- Type checking at the trace point is done by the compiler.
- Type checking of probe handler can be done by comparing #vargs strings.

Thanks,

-- 
Masami Hiramatsu

Software Engineer
Hitachi Computer Products (America) Inc.
Software Solutions Division

e-mail: mhiramat@redhat.com