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RE: module("kernel") / inline("function")
- From: "Stone, Joshua I" <joshua dot i dot stone at intel dot com>
- To: "Frank Ch. Eigler" <fche at redhat dot com>, <systemtap at sources dot redhat dot com>
- Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2006 17:25:04 -0700
- Subject: RE: module("kernel") / inline("function")
On Monday, July 31, 2006 1:25 PM, Frank Ch. Eigler wrote:
> joshua.i.stone wrote:
>
>> [...] I believe the current parser treats the kernel as a module
>> named "kernel". [...]
>
> I believe it's an elfutils behavior that we just inherited. I am
> ambivalent about whether this is a good idea.
I don't have a strong opinion on this either. One nice thing in
treating it this way is that module("*") effectively means "anywhere in
the kernel address space". It might be better if it used a name that
couldn't be an actual module name -- perhaps "$kernel" or "$vmlinux" or
something. But it doesn't seem useful to me to have a way to specify
all-modules-but-not-the-kernel, especially when a module on one system
might be compiled-in on another system.
A bit of a side note, I think we should discourage tapsets using
module("*") unless they really mean it. The offender that comes to mind
is the scsi tapset. I understand that this was done to cover whether
CONFIG_SCSI=y or m, but the "optional" syntax would suit this better.
Instead it could be 'kernel.function("scsi...")?,
module("scsi_mod").function("scsi...")?'. This is more verbose, but by
being more explicit we avoid having to read debuginfo for ALL modules.
> Similarly, with respect to function("foo") vs. inline("foo"), a
> bunch of accidents are producing the current effects. Do you have
> an opinion about how they *should* work?
Are you referring to discussions of "merging" the function/inline
syntax? This is harder, because inlines aren't localized. If an inline
function is part of a kernel API, then you really have to do module("*")
to probe all instances. And I don't think this broad searching is
something we should automatically do.
Josh