linux/tools/perf/Documentation
Jin Yao 6011518db3 perf header: Add infrastructure to record first and last sample time
perf report/script/... have a --time option to limit the time range of
output. That's very useful to slice large traces, e.g. when processing
the output of perf script for some analysis.

But right now --time only supports absolute time. Also there is no fast
way to get the start/end times of a given trace except for looking at
it.  This makes it hard to e.g. only decode the first half of the trace,
which is useful for parallelization of scripts

Another problem is that perf records are variable size and there is no
synchronization mechanism. So the only way to find the last sample
reliably would be to walk all samples. But we want to avoid that in perf
report/...  because it is already quite expensive. That is why storing
the first sample time and last sample time in perf record is better.

This patch creates a new header feature type HEADER_SAMPLE_TIME and
related ops. Save the first sample time and the last sample time to the
feature section in perf file header. That will be done when, for
instance, processing build-ids, where we already have to process all
samples to create the build-id table, take advantage of that to further
amortize that processing by storing HEADER_SAMPLE_TIME to make 'perf
report/script' faster when using --time.

Committer testing:

After this patch is applied the header is written with zeroes, we need
the next patch, for "perf record" to actually write the timestamps:

  # perf report -D | grep PERF_RECORD_SAMPLE\(
  22501155244406 0x44f0 [0x28]: PERF_RECORD_SAMPLE(IP, 0x4001): 25016/25016: 0xffffffffa21be8c5 period: 1 addr: 0
  <SNIP>
  22501155793625 0x4a30 [0x28]: PERF_RECORD_SAMPLE(IP, 0x4001): 25016/25016: 0xffffffffa21ffd50 period: 2828043 addr: 0
  # perf report --header | grep "time of "
  # time of first sample : 0.000000
  # time of last sample : 0.000000
  #

Changelog:

v7: 1. Rebase to latest perf/core branch.

    2. Add following clarification in patch description according to
       Arnaldo's suggestion.

       "That will be done when, for instance, processing build-ids,
	where we already have to process all samples to create the
	build-id table, take advantage of that to further amortize
	that processing by storing HEADER_SAMPLE_TIME to make
	'perf report/script' faster when using --time."

v4: Use perf script time style for timestamp printing. Also add with
    the printing of sample duration.

v3: Remove the definitions of first_sample_time/last_sample_time from
    perf_session. Just define them in perf_evlist

Signed-off-by: Jin Yao <yao.jin@linux.intel.com>
Acked-by: Jiri Olsa <jolsa@kernel.org>
Tested-by: Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo <acme@redhat.com>
Cc: Alexander Shishkin <alexander.shishkin@linux.intel.com>
Cc: Andi Kleen <ak@linux.intel.com>
Cc: Kan Liang <kan.liang@intel.com>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1512738826-2628-2-git-send-email-yao.jin@linux.intel.com
Signed-off-by: Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo <acme@redhat.com>
2018-01-08 11:20:51 -03:00
..
android.txt perf tools: Update android build documentation 2016-07-04 20:27:27 -03:00
asciidoc.conf
Build.txt perf build: Add build documentation 2015-02-12 17:53:00 -03:00
callchain-overhead-calculation.txt perf tools: Document --children option in more detail 2015-04-29 10:38:06 -03:00
examples.txt perf record: Remove -f/--force option 2013-07-08 17:37:25 -03:00
intel-bts.txt perf tools: Add Intel BTS support 2015-08-21 11:34:10 -03:00
intel-pt.txt perf intel-pt: Fix syntax in documentation of config option 2017-09-01 14:45:59 -03:00
itrace.txt perf auxtrace: Add itrace option to output power events 2017-06-27 12:09:58 -03:00
jit-interface.txt perf symbols: Add description of JIT interface 2012-08-13 14:55:02 -03:00
jitdump-specification.txt perf jit: Add jitdump format specification document 2016-10-24 11:07:41 -03:00
Makefile perf tools: Really install manpages via 'make install-man' 2017-08-22 13:24:53 -03:00
manpage-1.72.xsl
manpage-base.xsl
manpage-bold-literal.xsl
manpage-normal.xsl
manpage-suppress-sp.xsl
perf-annotate.txt perf annotate: Document --show-total-period option 2017-08-18 10:34:08 -03:00
perf-archive.txt perf archive: Remove duplicated 'runs' in man page 2013-12-09 15:21:45 -03:00
perf-bench.txt perf bench mem: Rename 'routine' to 'function' 2015-10-19 16:10:25 -03:00
perf-buildid-cache.txt perf buildid-cache: Document missing --force option 2017-11-16 14:50:07 -03:00
perf-buildid-list.txt perf report: Accept fifos as input file 2011-12-23 17:01:03 -02:00
perf-c2c.txt perf tools: Fix spelling mistakes 2017-05-04 09:59:53 -03:00
perf-config.txt perf diff: Add diff.compute config option 2017-02-13 14:29:37 -03:00
perf-data.txt perf data ctf: Add '--all' option for 'perf data convert' 2016-06-28 10:54:57 -03:00
perf-diff.txt perf diff: Add -q/--quiet option 2017-02-20 11:47:08 -03:00
perf-evlist.txt perf evlist: Document missing --force option 2017-11-16 14:50:07 -03:00
perf-ftrace.txt perf ftrace: Add -D option for depth filter 2017-06-19 22:05:54 -03:00
perf-help.txt
perf-inject.txt perf inject: Document missing options 2017-11-16 14:50:05 -03:00
perf-kallsyms.txt perf kallsyms: Introduce tool to look for extended symbol information on the running kernel 2017-01-11 16:48:01 -03:00
perf-kmem.txt perf kmem: Add option to specify time window of interest 2016-12-01 13:03:02 -03:00
perf-kvm.txt perf tools: Configurable per thread proc map processing time out 2015-06-19 18:27:13 -03:00
perf-list.txt perf list: Fix group description in the man page 2017-10-23 11:20:54 -03:00
perf-lock.txt perf lock: Document missing options 2017-11-16 14:50:04 -03:00
perf-mem.txt perf mem: Support physical address 2017-09-01 14:46:23 -03:00
perf-probe.txt perf probe: Support escaped character in parser 2017-12-27 12:15:55 -03:00
perf-record.txt Merge branch 'perf/urgent' into perf/core, to pick up fixes 2017-10-20 11:02:05 +02:00
perf-report.txt perf util: Enable handling of inlined frames by default 2017-10-25 10:50:47 -03:00
perf-sched.txt perf sched: Document missing --force option 2017-11-16 14:50:06 -03:00
perf-script-perl.txt perf script: Fix documentation errors 2017-06-07 20:27:20 -03:00
perf-script-python.txt perf script python: Remove dups in documentation examples 2017-06-07 20:36:12 -03:00
perf-script.txt perf script: Allow computing 'perf stat' style metrics 2017-11-29 18:18:01 -03:00
perf-stat.txt perf stat: Support JSON metrics in perf stat 2017-09-13 09:49:13 -03:00
perf-test.txt perf test: Add -F/--dont-fork option 2016-06-30 18:27:45 -03:00
perf-timechart.txt perf timechart: Document missing --force option 2017-11-16 14:50:06 -03:00
perf-top.txt perf top: Document missing options 2017-11-16 14:49:56 -03:00
perf-trace.txt perf trace: Document missing option, colons 2017-11-16 14:50:05 -03:00
perf.data-file-format.txt perf header: Add infrastructure to record first and last sample time 2018-01-08 11:20:51 -03:00
perf.txt perf tools: Handle -h and -v options 2015-10-05 16:36:18 -03:00
perfconfig.example perf config: Show default report configuration in example and docs 2016-09-01 09:44:13 -03:00
tips.txt perf c2c: Add a tip about cacheline events 2017-12-05 15:43:55 -03:00