Re: [PATCH v2 5/7] perf: Introduce address range filtering

Peter Zijlstra
2016-05-03T08:57:10Z

On Wed, Apr 27, 2016 at 06:44:46PM +0300, Alexander Shishkin wrote:
> Many instruction trace pmus out there support address range-based
> filtering, which would, for example, generate trace data only for a
> given range of instruction addresses, which is useful for tracing
> individual functions, modules or libraries. Other pmus may also
> utilize this functionality to allow filtering to or filtering out
> code at certain address ranges.
>
> This patch introduces the interface for userspace to specify these
> filters and for the pmu drivers to apply these filters to hardware
> configuration.
>
> The user interface is an ascii string that is passed via an ioctl
> and specifies (in the form of an ascii string) address ranges within
> certain object files or within kernel. There is no special treatment
> for kernel modules yet, but it might be a worthy pursuit.
>
> The pmu driver interface basically add two extra callbacks to the
> pmu driver structure, one of which validates the filter configuration
> proposed by the user against what the hardware is actually capable of
> doing and the other one translates hardware-independent filter
> configuration into something that can be programmed into the
> hardware.

Alexander, could you please write a manpage patch for this new API?