tree c4c7bed1ccb7a0a332abdc7cbf4620c98a0321cf
parent 7a4f453b6d7379a7c380825949977c5a838aa012
author Frederic Weisbecker <fweisbec@gmail.com> 1240109489 +0200
committer Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu> 1240396158 +0200

tracing/events: provide string with undefined size support

This patch provides the support for dynamic size strings on
event tracing.

The key concept is to use a structure with an ending char array field of
undefined size and use such ability to allocate the minimal size on the
ring buffer to make one or more string entries fit inside, as opposite
to a fixed length strings with upper bound.

The strings themselves are represented using fields which have an offset
value from the beginning of the entry.

This patch provides three new macros:

__string(item, src)

This one declares a string to the structure inside TP_STRUCT__entry.
You need to provide the name of the string field and the source that will
be copied inside.
This will also add the dynamic size of the string needed for the ring
buffer entry allocation.
A stack allocated structure is used to temporarily store the offset
of each strings, avoiding double calls to strlen() on each event
insertion.

__get_str(field)

This one will give you a pointer to the string you have created. This
is an abstract helper to resolve the absolute address given the field
name which is a relative address from the beginning of the trace_structure.

__assign_str(dst, src)

Use this macro to automatically perform the string copy from src to
dst. src must be a variable to assign and dst is the name of a __string
field.

Example on how to use it:

TRACE_EVENT(my_event,
	TP_PROTO(char *src1, char *src2),

	TP_ARGS(src1, src2),
	TP_STRUCT__entry(
		__string(str1, src1)
		__string(str2, src2)
	),
	TP_fast_assign(
		__assign_str(str1, src1);
		__assign_str(str2, src2);
	),
	TP_printk("%s %s", __get_str(src1), __get_str(src2))
)

Of course you can mix-up any __field or __array inside this
TRACE_EVENT. The position of the __string or __assign_str
doesn't matter.

Changes in v2:

Address the suggestion of Steven Rostedt: drop the opening_string() macro
and redefine __ending_string() to get the size of the string to be copied
instead of overwritting the whole ring buffer allocation.

Changes in v3:

Address other suggestions of Steven Rostedt and Peter Zijlstra with
some changes: drop the __ending_string and the need to have only one
string field.
Use offsets instead of absolute addresses.

[ Impact: allow more compact memory usage for string tracing ]

Signed-off-by: Frederic Weisbecker <fweisbec@gmail.com>
Cc: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>
Cc: Li Zefan <lizf@cn.fujitsu.com>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl>