[lttng-dev] Tracing custom text file using TMF or LTTV question

[Alexandre Montplaisir]

Hi Stavros,

First, thanks for the interest :)

To add support for a new trace type to TMF, you basically have 2 
options: either you first convert your trace to another supported 
format, or you write a parser in TMF. In practice, the second option is 
easier. There is, imho, not much gain in converting existing traces to 
CTF, that just ends up being an extra intermediate format. (On the other 
hand, if you tracer directly writes in CTF, that can net you advantages).

If your trace is in text format, it's possible to create a custom text 
parser, which you can define directly from the UI using regular 
expressions. If it's a binary format, then that requires writing some 
Java code.


Next, you'll typically want to add views/analyses for your trace type. 
The view in your screenshot look quite doable, using our generic Time 
Graph View. You can see a screenshot of the Control Flow and Resource 
View, both based on the Time Graph views, on that page:
http://eclipse.org/linuxtools/projectPages/lttng/

(Latest version also supports showing arrows in the time graph. The 
latest Control Flow View does so, to show the "flow" of each CPU. We 
should update that screenshot...)

Another thing to note, a very new feature in TMF is the possibility to 
define analyses and views using XML definitions, so you do not need to 
write Java code to create a custom view. This makes it VERY easy to 
create new views! The data-driven views are a bit more limited than the 
"Java-driven" ones (for example, I think right now arrows are not 
supported in the data-driven views), but it's slowly improving.


If you have any other questions, please let us know!

Cheers,
Alexandre



On 06/12/2014 07:56 AM, Stavros Giannakopoulos wrote:
> Greetings,
> i am running a project on behalf or Ericsson Sweden regarding tracing on a custom multicore architecture.
>
> I came across your tools through a colleague and It seems that they might be appropriate for our work, especially TMF since we already utilize
> eclipse quite heavily.
>
> I have some technical questions though, and I would like some feedback so I know whether our specifications can be covered by that or some similar tool.
>
> Please forward this email to the appropriate department if possible.
>
> The specifications we have are:
> 1. The trace we are interested in is a process-centric view of the events (or actors in our system) along with their respective threads, that will run on specific cores.
> 2. We don't need to capture the traces, that has been already done, only to parse the generated file and produce a graphical view that includes the processes, threads, cores and the messages that trigger new processes.
> is that possible?
> 3. We have the trace files in .lat format already which are generated by using the Flexus tools. What I want to know if there is a conversion tool available or we need to develop a script to do the conversion to a suitable format (CTF). And if the TMF or LTTV can produce this result from a custom trace file and not a kernel trace.
>
> Observe on Fig 1 a simplified view of our needs. In practice there will be a few thousands processes in tens of cores and the start/end times and the messages are essential.
>
> Fig 1: Example of result wanted.
> [cid:image002.jpg at 01CF8644.F8F779E0]
>
>
> Please reply on my email: stavros.giannakopoulos at ericsson.com<mailto:stavros.giannakopoulos at ericsson.com>
> or contact Johan Mellgren  at johan.q.mellgren at ericsson.com<mailto:johan.q.mellgren at ericsson.com>
>
> Regards,
> Stavros Giannakopoulos
>
>
>
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> lttng-dev at lists.lttng.org
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