[lttng-dev] lttng-ust under the hood

[Thibault, Daniel]

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Date: Thu, 22 May 2014 18:21:29 +0200
From: Gerlando Falauto <gerlando.falauto at keymile.com>

> I'm still struggling to figure out why, depending on how I compile and link my application, I can get either custom tracepoint providers
> OR tracef() to work, but not both at the same time.
>
> Is there any documentation explaining how lttng-ust is roughly supposed to work?
> (i.e. linking trickeries, libraries needed in LD_PRELOAD, _LGPL_SOURCE, tracepoints, probes and so on...)
>
> Gerlando

   It's all a matter of choice.  Tracepoint providers can be in the app (statically linked in) or dynamically linked to it.  In the latter case, the linking can be mandatory (so the app will fail to launch if it cannot find the tracepoint provider .so) or optional.  With optional linking, failure to find the .so means the app isn't traceable but otherwise runs normally.  LD_PRELOAD is generally used to provide the app with the tracepoint provider .so when tracing is desired.

   Extensive documentation (in PDF) is currently undergoing editorial review, and the plan is to move said documentation to DocBook format so it can be included in the LTTng distribution.

  Since tracef() depends on liblttng-ust just like ordinary UST, I'm not sure which problem you're running into.  Could you give us a simplified makefile that showcases the issue?

Daniel U. Thibault
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