[PATCH v21 06/19] perf, tools: Support alias descriptions

[Sukadev Bhattiprolu]

Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo [acme at kernel.org] wrote:
> Em Tue, Sep 27, 2016 at 11:11:16AM -0700, Sukadev Bhattiprolu escreveu:
> > Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo [acme at kernel.org] wrote:
> > > Em Thu, Sep 15, 2016 at 03:24:43PM -0700, Sukadev Bhattiprolu escreveu:
> > > > From: Andi Kleen <ak at linux.intel.com>
> > > > Add support to print alias descriptions in perf list, which
> > > > are taken from the generated event files.
> > > > 
> > > > The sorting code is changed to put the events with descriptions
> > > > at the end. The descriptions are printed as possibly multiple word
> > > > wrapped lines.
> > > 
> > > So, now I'm trying to reproduce the results below, but I couldn't find a
> > > tarball with those .json files for me to use, can you provide me with
> > > one?
> > 
> > The data files are in my github, in the json-code+data-v21 branch
> > starting with 23bb101. They are individual commits rather than a
> > tarball though.
> 
> Ok, I'll pick one for powerpc and another for x86_64 so that I can test
> it and Jiri's x-compile support.

Please pull all files if possible, specially on x86, _before_ building the
perf binary. If you are going to pull only one, you need to make sure that
the file you pull matches the CPU model on the system you are testing.(see
below). For Power, you need to test on Power8.

> 
> Refresh my mind, what is the plan on these files? Are we just going to
> provide pointers to where to get them from vendors, ship it in the
> kernel, auto-download them as part of the build process?

They are supposed to be committed into the linux kernel tree as shown
in the json-code+data-v21 tree and they will be picked up _during build_
of the perf binary. (We are just not mailing those data files as patches
since they are large and there is very little value in reviewing them).

When building perf on on say x86, event tables for all the different
x86 CPU models will be included in the perf binary. When perf is then
executed on an x86 box, it will detect the CPU model of that box and
use the set of events corresponding to that model.

If the CPU model does not match the models "known" to the perf binary,
then the symbolic names will not work on that system, but there should
be no other change in behavior.

Patch 15/19 tries to explain the process.

> 
> At least examples that allows to build and have a new 'perf test' entry
> to check them automatically seems to be in order, no?

Well, the hope was that build/usage will be transparent! but we did not
test in the cross-compile environment. Will think about a test case.
Please let me know if we can update the README in Patch 15/19 in any
way.

> 
> - Arnaldo
> 
> > 	>       https://github.com/sukadev/linux.git
> > 	>
> > 	>       Branch                  Description
> > 	>       ------------------------------------------------------
> > 	>       json-code-v21           Source Code only
> > 	>       json-code+data-v21      Both code and data(for build/test/pull)
> > 	> 
> > 
> > Sukadev