From: Dave Chinner Subject: Re: [PATCH 3/6] dax: add tracepoint infrastructure, PMD tracing Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2016 13:49:18 +1100 Message-ID: <20161125024918.GX31101@dastard> References: <1479926662-21718-1-git-send-email-ross.zwisler@linux.intel.com> <1479926662-21718-4-git-send-email-ross.zwisler@linux.intel.com> <20161124173220.GR1555@ZenIV.linux.org.uk> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Jan Kara , Andrew Morton , Matthew Wilcox , linux-nvdimm-hn68Rpc1hR1g9hUCZPvPmw@public.gmane.org, linux-kernel-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org, Steven Rostedt , Christoph Hellwig , linux-mm-Bw31MaZKKs3YtjvyW6yDsg@public.gmane.org, Ingo Molnar , linux-fsdevel-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org, linux-ext4-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org To: Al Viro Return-path: Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20161124173220.GR1555-3bDd1+5oDREiFSDQTTA3OLVCufUGDwFn@public.gmane.org> List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: linux-nvdimm-bounces-hn68Rpc1hR1g9hUCZPvPmw@public.gmane.org Sender: "Linux-nvdimm" List-Id: linux-ext4.vger.kernel.org On Thu, Nov 24, 2016 at 05:32:20PM +0000, Al Viro wrote: > On Wed, Nov 23, 2016 at 11:44:19AM -0700, Ross Zwisler wrote: > > Tracepoints are the standard way to capture debugging and tracing > > information in many parts of the kernel, including the XFS and ext4 > > filesystems. Create a tracepoint header for FS DAX and add the first DAX > > tracepoints to the PMD fault handler. This allows the tracing for DAX to > > be done in the same way as the filesystem tracing so that developers can > > look at them together and get a coherent idea of what the system is doing. > > It also has one hell of potential for becoming a massive nuisance. > Keep in mind that if any userland code becomes dependent on those - that's it, > they have become parts of stable userland ABI and are to be maintained > indefinitely. Don't expect "tracepoints are special case" to prevent that. I call bullshit just like I always do when someone spouts this "tracepoints are stable ABI" garbage. If we want to provide stable tracepoints, then we need to /create a stable tracepoint API/ and convert all the tracepoints that /need to be stable/ to use it. Then developers only need to be careful about modifying code around the /explicitly stable/ tracepoints and we avoid retrospectively locking the kernel implementation into a KABI so tight we can't do anything anymore.... Quite frankly, anyone that wants to stop us from adding/removing/changing tracepoints or the code that they are reporting information about "because ABI" can go take a long walk off a short cliff. Diagnostic tracepoints are not part of the stable ABI. End of story. > So treat anything you add in that manner as potential stable ABI > you might have to keep around forever. It's *not* a glorified debugging > printk. trace_printk() is the glorified debugging printk for tracing, not trace events. Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Chinner david-FqsqvQoI3Ljby3iVrkZq2A@public.gmane.org