[lttng-dev] Using LTTng for existing Qt-based tracepoints?

[Arnaud Clère]

Hi,
I am exploring the feasibility of getting part of LTTng performance and structure for existing qDebug() tracepoints without having to rework them at all.
The idea would be to interpret QDebug::operator<< differently to:
1/ collect static information such as the tracepoint message "format" without having to formalize and "freeze" it in external description files
2/ assemble event data in a binary but self-describing format that could be decoded by generic tools without having to "sync" the trace and tracepoint definitions.

Maybe it is not so useful to device/system developers but I think it would be highly valuable to application developers to get decent performance and trace analysis tools for free (almost).
So, what is this "generic" LTTng tracepoint you were talking about? 

Cheers,
Arnaud

-----Original Message-----
From: milian On Behalf Of Milian Wolff
Sent: vendredi 20 octobre 2017 21:55
To: lttng-dev at lists.lttng.org
Cc: Arnaud Clère <arnaud.clere at minmaxmedical.com>
Subject: Re: [lttng-dev] Using LTTng for existing Qt-based tracepoints?

On Donnerstag, 19. Oktober 2017 12:00:01 CEST Arnaud Clère wrote:
> Hi all,
> I am evaluating the feasibility of using LTTng as a backend for 
> existing Qt tracepoints following the discussions at Qt Contributors Summit :
> https://wiki.qt.io/QtCS2017_Discuss_Qt_Logging_enhancements . The idea 
> would be to get less performance impact when tracing and more 
> structured data to analyse without changing Qt users' code.
> 
> I see that instead of describing all tracepoints, we could use a 
> generic LTT tracepoint like in Python:
> http://git.lttng.org/?p=lttng-ust.git;a=blob;f=liblttng-ust-python-age
> nt/lt
> tng_ust_python.h
> 
> Except, I would like to structure the tracepoint data at run-time 
> following a JSON-based data model. I think I could encode that part of 
> CTF dynamically by appending binary user data, CTF variants, 
> dynamically-sized CTF structures and sequences in a local buffer.
> 
> But I am wondering how to pass this buffer along with its size to LTTng.
> I am afraid a TP_ARGS(void*, buffer) and TP_FIELDS(buffer) would not 
> work since it would require LTTng to read the CTF in "buffer" to 
> discover where it stops...
> 
> Or should I use some other API?

Hey Arnaud,

Why do we want to use the generic LTTng tracepoint instead of the concrete ones? See also the existing work that went into https://codereview.qt-project.org/#/c/185287/ and the dependent changesets. We hope to be able to revive this patchset soon.

Cheers

--
Milian Wolff | milian.wolff at kdab.com | Senior Software Engineer KDAB (Deutschland) GmbH&Co KG, a KDAB Group company
Tel: +49-30-521325470
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