Re: [PATCH 00/11] [GIT PULL] more updates for the tag format

[Theodore Tso <tytso@mit.edu>]

On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 09:49:29AM -0400, Steven Rostedt wrote:
> > 
> > Maybe I'm missing something, but looks like the this new format, while
> > simpler and easier to read, doesn't have support for using a more
> > complicated C expression as a printk argument.  For example:
> > 
> > 	TP_printk("dev %s ino %lu mode %d uid %u gid %u blocks %llu",
> > 		  jbd2_dev_to_name(__entry->dev), __entry->ino, __entry->mode,
> > 		  __entry->uid, __entry->gid, __entry->blocks)
> > 
> > How should I handle the "jbd2_dev_to_name(__entry->dev)" argument to
> > TP_printk?  The whole point of calling jbd2_dev_to_name() at TP_printk
> > time is to not bloat the ring buffer with a 32 byte devname.
> 
> Understood, and the example you just gave also has the flaw that a 
> userspace tool could not parse it, because it would not know what to do 
> with "jbd2_dev_to_name()".
> 
> This is why I suggested keeping the TP_printk, for cases like this. Since 
> it is also currently useless in userspace.
> 
> But we really should convert all cases, and I was toying with an idea to 
> dynamically make your own data type, and be able to make a way to print 
> it.

Yes, another approach for handling this case would be to take my
"jbd2_dev_to_name" function and support it as a first-class tagged
type; after all, I'm sure ext4 won't be the only place that would like
to take a dev_t and print the device name.  So this could certainly be
fixed by adding some kind of "<dev:xxx>" sort of tagged name.

But I think it would be good to keep TP_printk because otherwise I'll
have to scramble and change my marker->tracepoint patches during the
merge window, which would invalidate all of the testing to date.

I agree that the new tagged format is superior, but I'm wondering
whether it really makes sense to try to scramble and try to switch my
ext4/jbd2 users in the 36 hours or so before Linus opens the merge
window....

						- Ted