[lttng-dev] Human read-writeable format for CTF traces

[Matthew Khouzam]

Hi Genevieve,
Would it be an interesting option to make a "metadata" that would parse
the xml? Just throwing another option into the mix.
Matthew
On 14-02-03 09:59 AM, Geneviève Bastien wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> Short question:
>
> As we develop analyses in TMF for LTTng traces, we'd like to unit test
> them with very specific sequences of events, something no real-life
> trace can provide. We'd like to build our own traces manually.
>
> Does a human read-writeable format already exist to work with CTF
> traces or convert from/to CTF traces? I heard of a few CTF trace
> generators, some which haven't been rebased in a while. What's their
> status? Anything that answers our need there?
>
> Thanks,
>
> ==================
> Detailed specification of what I'm looking for and why:
>
> * In TMF, analyses use event requests and they handle events. It does
> not matter at all whether the event came from a CTF binary stream or
> from a text file, as long as they have the same name and fields, it
> will be handled the same.
>
> * Also, while we may want to hand make a full test trace, we may also
> wish to take (part of) a real life CTF trace, convert it to a human
> read-writeable format, tweak it to our needs and... as far as TMF is
> concerned, we'll be perfectly happy with this format, but it may
> eventually be desirable to convert it back to a CTF trace.
>
> * XML-defined analyses are about to make it into TMF master. That
> means users will be able to develop in XML their own state providers,
> but eventually also their own views, filters, analyses, etc. Before
> trying them on real traces, it must be possible to test them on
> controlled hand-made traces. So that trace format is not just a
> feature for unit tests, it should be made available in the main TMF
> for users to use.
>
> * We must keep in mind that users of this format may not have access
> to the complete LTTng toolchain, or even to a linux command line as
> they may be working... on Windows! That's even more true now that work
> is being done to convert Windows traces to CTF format. So the solution
> must be completely standalone in TMF.
>
> * In a quick prototype last week, I came up with this format for the
> human read-writeable test traces:
>
> <trace>
> <event>
> <timestamp value="1" />
> <eventName value="A" />
> <source value="0" /> /** the cpu */
> <field name="b" value="1" type="int" />
> <field name="c" value="abcdef" type="string" />
> </event>
> </trace>
>
> Why XML? Because it's easy to validate with a XSD and we can use
> existing tool to automatically generate from this XSD a user interface
> to edit the events. But that's just a suggestion.
>
> * Lastly and not least, whatever we end up implementing in TMF must
> use or at least play nice with other tools around CTF that do more or
> less the same thing. I wouldn't want to reinvent the wheel here.
>
> Any thoughts?  Any thing I should look at?
>
> Thanks,
> Geneviève
>
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