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  • Steven Rostedt's avatar
    tracing: new format for specialized trace points · da4d0302
    Steven Rostedt authored
    
    
    Impact: clean up and enhancement
    
    The TRACE_EVENT_FORMAT macro looks quite ugly and is limited in its
    ability to save data as well as to print the record out. Working with
    Ingo Molnar, we came up with a new format that is much more pleasing to
    the eye of C developers. This new macro is more C style than the old
    macro, and is more obvious to what it does.
    
    Here's the example. The only updated macro in this patch is the
    sched_switch trace point.
    
    The old method looked like this:
    
     TRACE_EVENT_FORMAT(sched_switch,
            TP_PROTO(struct rq *rq, struct task_struct *prev,
                    struct task_struct *next),
            TP_ARGS(rq, prev, next),
            TP_FMT("task %s:%d ==> %s:%d",
                  prev->comm, prev->pid, next->comm, next->pid),
            TRACE_STRUCT(
                    TRACE_FIELD(pid_t, prev_pid, prev->pid)
                    TRACE_FIELD(int, prev_prio, prev->prio)
                    TRACE_FIELD_SPECIAL(char next_comm[TASK_COMM_LEN],
                                        next_comm,
                                        TP_CMD(memcpy(TRACE_ENTRY->next_comm,
                                                     next->comm,
                                                     TASK_COMM_LEN)))
                    TRACE_FIELD(pid_t, next_pid, next->pid)
                    TRACE_FIELD(int, next_prio, next->prio)
            ),
            TP_RAW_FMT("prev %d:%d ==> next %s:%d:%d")
            );
    
    The above method is hard to read and requires two format fields.
    
    The new method:
    
     /*
      * Tracepoint for task switches, performed by the scheduler:
      *
      * (NOTE: the 'rq' argument is not used by generic trace events,
      *        but used by the latency tracer plugin. )
      */
     TRACE_EVENT(sched_switch,
    
    	TP_PROTO(struct rq *rq, struct task_struct *prev,
    		 struct task_struct *next),
    
    	TP_ARGS(rq, prev, next),
    
    	TP_STRUCT__entry(
    		__array(	char,	prev_comm,	TASK_COMM_LEN	)
    		__field(	pid_t,	prev_pid			)
    		__field(	int,	prev_prio			)
    		__array(	char,	next_comm,	TASK_COMM_LEN	)
    		__field(	pid_t,	next_pid			)
    		__field(	int,	next_prio			)
    	),
    
    	TP_printk("task %s:%d [%d] ==> %s:%d [%d]",
    		__entry->prev_comm, __entry->prev_pid, __entry->prev_prio,
    		__entry->next_comm, __entry->next_pid, __entry->next_prio),
    
    	TP_fast_assign(
    		memcpy(__entry->next_comm, next->comm, TASK_COMM_LEN);
    		__entry->prev_pid	= prev->pid;
    		__entry->prev_prio	= prev->prio;
    		memcpy(__entry->prev_comm, prev->comm, TASK_COMM_LEN);
    		__entry->next_pid	= next->pid;
    		__entry->next_prio	= next->prio;
    	)
     );
    
    This macro is called TRACE_EVENT, it is broken up into 5 parts:
    
     TP_PROTO:        the proto type of the trace point
     TP_ARGS:         the arguments of the trace point
     TP_STRUCT_entry: the structure layout of the entry in the ring buffer
     TP_printk:       the printk format
     TP_fast_assign:  the method used to write the entry into the ring buffer
    
    The structure is the definition of how the event will be saved in the
    ring buffer. The printk is used by the internal tracing in case of
    an oops, and the kernel needs to print out the format of the record
    to the console. This the TP_printk gives a means to show the records
    in a human readable format. It is also used to print out the data
    from the trace file.
    
    The TP_fast_assign is executed directly. It is basically like a C function,
    where the __entry is the handle to the record.
    
    Signed-off-by: default avatarSteven Rostedt <srostedt@redhat.com>
    da4d0302