Re: [PATCH 0/2] utrace

[Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org>]

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On Wed, Aug 27, 2008 at 10:10:55PM +0530, Ananth N Mavinakayanahalli wrote:
> Uprobes is just one user of utrace. It is intended for use for simple
> tracing where we need a kernel+userspace look at the problem at hand.
> The intention is for use in simple cases (when condition x is met, what
> is the value of variable y, etc).
> 
> For more advanced tracing though, there are other ideas being proposed
> (see ntrace discussions on utrace-devel, but I guess now lkml is the
> right place for that discussion too).
> 
> However, there are components of uprobes such as breakpoint
> insertion/removal and single-stepping infrastructure that are
> potentially useful to other userspace debuggers. We are working on
> factoring those out to live independent of uprobes. You should be seeing
> those patches soon.

I hope my original mail was clear that I'm not principially against
utrace.  I think having a generic trace even dispatcher is a good thing
if it is a) not overly complicated (see Alexeyús mails for that) and b)
actually has a user.  A better debugger interface as the ntrace idea
would be the prime candidate for that.