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From:   Toke =?utf-8?Q?H=C3=B8iland-J=C3=B8rgensen?= <toke@redhat.com>
To:     Andrii Nakryiko <andrii.nakryiko@gmail.com>,
        Jiri Olsa <jolsa@kernel.org>
Cc:     Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo <acme@kernel.org>,
        lkml <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
        Networking <netdev@vger.kernel.org>, bpf <bpf@vger.kernel.org>,
        Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>,
        Namhyung Kim <namhyung@kernel.org>,
        Alexander Shishkin <alexander.shishkin@linux.intel.com>,
        Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl>,
        Michael Petlan <mpetlan@redhat.com>,
        Jesper Dangaard Brouer <brouer@redhat.com>,
        Daniel Borkmann <daniel@iogearbox.net>,
        Alexei Starovoitov <alexei.starovoitov@gmail.com>,
        Martin KaFai Lau <kafai@fb.com>,
        Song Liu <songliubraving@fb.com>, Yonghong Song <yhs@fb.com>,
        Andrii Nakryiko <andriin@fb.com>,
        Quentin Monnet <quentin.monnet@netronome.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCHv4 0/6] perf/bpftool: Allow to link libbpf dynamically
In-Reply-To: <CAEf4BzY_D9JHjuU6K=ciS70NSy2UvSm_uf1NfN_tmFz1445Jiw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20191202131847.30837-1-jolsa@kernel.org> <CAEf4BzY_D9JHjuU6K=ciS70NSy2UvSm_uf1NfN_tmFz1445Jiw@mail.gmail.com>
Date:   Mon, 02 Dec 2019 22:15:35 +0100
Message-ID: <87wobepgy0.fsf@toke.dk>
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Andrii Nakryiko <andrii.nakryiko@gmail.com> writes:

> On Mon, Dec 2, 2019 at 5:19 AM Jiri Olsa <jolsa@kernel.org> wrote:
>>
>> hi,
>> adding support to link bpftool with libbpf dynamically,
>> and config change for perf.
>>
>> It's now possible to use:
>>   $ make -C tools/bpf/bpftool/ LIBBPF_DYNAMIC=3D1
>>
>> which will detect libbpf devel package and if found, link it with bpftoo=
l.
>>
>> It's possible to use arbitrary installed libbpf:
>>   $ make -C tools/bpf/bpftool/ LIBBPF_DYNAMIC=3D1 LIBBPF_DIR=3D/tmp/libb=
pf/
>>
>> I based this change on top of Arnaldo's perf/core, because
>> it contains libbpf feature detection code as dependency.
>>
>> Also available in:
>>   git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/jolsa/perf.git
>>   libbpf/dyn
>>
>> v4 changes:
>>   - based on Toke's v3 post, there's no need for additional API exports:
>>
>>     Since bpftool uses bits of libbpf that are not exported as public AP=
I in
>>     the .so version, we also pass in libbpf.a to the linker, which allow=
s it to
>>     pick up the private functions from the static library without having=
 to
>>     expose them as ABI.
>
> Whoever understands how this is supposed to work, can you please
> explain? From reading this, I think what we **want** is:
>
> - all LIBBPF_API-exposed APIs should be dynamically linked against libbpf=
.so;
> - everything else used from libbpf (e.g., netlink APIs), should come
> from libbpf.a.
>
> Am I getting the idea right?
>
> If yes, are we sure it actually works like that in practice? I've
> compiled with LIBBPF_DYNAMIC=3D1, and what I see is that libelf, libc,
> zlib, etc functions do have relocations against them in ".rela.plt"
> section. None of libbpf exposed APIs, though, have any of such
> relocations. Which to me suggests that they are just statically linked
> against libbpf.a and libbpf.so is just recorded in ELF as a dynamic
> library dependency because of this extra -lbpf flag. Which kind of
> defeats the purpose of this whole endeavor, no?
>
> I'm no linker expert, though, so I apologize if I got it completely
> wrong, would really appreciate someone to detail this a bit more.
> Thanks!

Ah, that is my mistake: I was getting dynamic libbpf symbols with this
approach, but that was because I had the version of libbpf.so in my
$LIBDIR that had the patch to expose the netlink APIs as versioned
symbols; so it was just pulling in everything from the shared library.

So what I was going for was exactly what you described above; but it
seems that doesn't actually work. Too bad, and sorry for wasting your
time on this :/

-Toke