Re: [PATCH v3 2/2] dynamic debug: allow printing to trace event

From: Joe Perches
Date: Wed Aug 26 2020 - 15:54:03 EST


On Wed, 2020-08-26 at 15:32 -0400, Steven Rostedt wrote:
> On Tue, 25 Aug 2020 08:53:25 -0700
> Joe Perches <joe@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > > The print buffer is statically allocated and managed using code borrowed
> > > from __ftrace_trace_stack() and is limited to 256 bytes (four of these
> > > are allocated per CPU to handle the various contexts); anything larger
> > > will be truncated.
> >
> > There is an effort to avoid using trace_printk and the like
> > so perhaps this feature should have the same compile time
> > guard.
>
> No, this is fine for being in a production kernel. Basically, these are
> simply debug printk()s that can also be put into the trace buffer. The
> key difference to trace_printk() is that they are an event that needs
> to be enabled to write into the buffer.

It just seems like a backdoor way to convert various pr_debug functions
(dev_dbg/netdev_dbg, et al) into tracing.

What's the real value? Timing data? Something else?