Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1751395AbWIOTUY (ORCPT ); Fri, 15 Sep 2006 15:20:24 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751409AbWIOTUX (ORCPT ); Fri, 15 Sep 2006 15:20:23 -0400 Received: from e4.ny.us.ibm.com ([32.97.182.144]:58079 "EHLO e4.ny.us.ibm.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751395AbWIOTUW (ORCPT ); Fri, 15 Sep 2006 15:20:22 -0400 Message-ID: <450AFCF0.3040503@us.ibm.com> Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2006 14:20:16 -0500 From: "Jose R. Santos" Reply-To: jrs@us.ibm.com Organization: IBM User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.5 (X11/20060728) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: karim@opersys.com CC: Andrew Morton , Alan Cox , Roman Zippel , Tim Bird , Ingo Molnar , Mathieu Desnoyers , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Christoph Hellwig , Ingo Molnar , Greg Kroah-Hartman , Thomas Gleixner , Tom Zanussi , ltt-dev@shafik.org, Michel Dagenais Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/11] LTTng-core (basic tracing infrastructure) 0.5.108 References: <20060914033826.GA2194@Krystal> <20060914112718.GA7065@elte.hu> <20060914135548.GA24393@elte.hu> <20060914171320.GB1105@elte.hu> <20060914181557.GA22469@elte.hu> <4509B03A.3070504@am.sony.com> <1158320406.29932.16.camel@localhost.localdomain> <1158323938.29932.23.camel@localhost.localdomain> <20060915104527.89396eaf.akpm@osdl.org> <450AEDF2.3070504@opersys.com> In-Reply-To: <450AEDF2.3070504@opersys.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1703 Lines: 35 Karim Yaghmour wrote: > > Although IMO this is a bit lame - it is quite possible to go into > > SexySystemTapGUI, click on a particular kernel file-n-line and have > > systemtap userspace keep track of that place in the kernel source across > > many kernel versions: all it needs to do is to remember the file+line and a > > snippet of the surrounding text, for readjustment purposes. > > Sure, if you're a kernel developer, but as I've explained numberous > times in this thread, there are far more many users of tracing than > kernel developers. > This is so true (and the main reason we implemented a trace utility in SystemTap). Several of the people that work with in my team are _not_ kernel developers. They do not necessarily know the Linux kernel code enough to insert their own instrumentation. On the other had, they do posses other very good knowledges about things specific to a particular software stack or a HW subsystem. Structured predefined probe points (dynamic or static) allow people with limited kernel hacking skills to feedback useful information back to developers of the kernel. I agree with Karim that a trace tool (while useful to developers) is mostly targeted at a non kernel developer audience. They are mostly meant to enhance the communication between developers and regular users. Any solution that is intended to be dynamic replacement for LTTng needs to take these kinds of users into account. -JRS - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/