[RFC 0/6] perf, tool: Allow to use hw events in PMU syntax

From: Jiri Olsa
Date: Thu Jun 14 2012 - 16:40:34 EST


hi,
here's the change to make following syntax available:
perf stat -e cpu/event=instructions/u ls

this is identical to:
perf stat -e instructions:u ls

The patch 1 makes PERF_TYPE_HARDWARE events translations available
by the sysfs 'events' group attribute under the PMU record.

Once we hit the PERF_TYPE_HARDWARE event mnemonic within the
PMU event term parsing like:
'event=cycles'
we translate the 'cycles' string into specific PERF_TYPE_HARDWARE
translation and assign this value to the 'event' term value.

So given that:
$ cat /sys/devices/cpu/events/instructions
0xc0

following examples are identical:
perf stat -e cpu/event=0xc0/u ls
perf stat -e cpu/event=instructions/u ls

It feels like a hack since it relies on:
- kernel does no more than translating the 'cycles' value and putting it
to the 'attr.config' - I'm not sure this is allways true.
- user uses this translation with terms that fill the attr.config same way
as kernel does, like for 'event':
$ cat /sys/devices/cpu/format/event
config:0-7

This could be ensured by perf tool.. but it smells like CPU specific again.

note, it's not tested much.. ;)

attached patches:
1/6 perf, x86: Making hardware events tranlations sysfs available
2/6 perf tools: Fix generation of pmu list
3/6 perf, tool: Properly free format data
4/6 perf, tool: Add events support for pmu
5/6 perf, tool: event parsing - split PE_VALUE_SYM to SW and HW tokens
6/6 perf, tool: Support translate terms for hw events

thoughts? ;)
jirka
---
arch/x86/kernel/cpu/perf_event.c | 44 +++++++++
tools/perf/util/parse-events.c | 8 ++-
tools/perf/util/parse-events.h | 3 +
tools/perf/util/parse-events.l | 2 +-
tools/perf/util/parse-events.y | 26 +++++-
tools/perf/util/pmu.c | 179 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-----
tools/perf/util/pmu.h | 2 +
7 files changed, 233 insertions(+), 31 deletions(-)
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