Re: [PATCH 13/16] perf callchain: Switch default to 'graph,0.5,caller'

[Namhyung Kim <namhyung@kernel.org>]

Hi Arnaldo,

On Tue, Oct 20, 2015 at 03:44:04PM -0300, Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo wrote:
> Em Tue, Oct 20, 2015 at 07:21:16PM +0200, Frederic Weisbecker escreveu:
> > On Tue, Oct 20, 2015 at 10:06:51AM -0300, Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo wrote:
> > > Em Tue, Oct 20, 2015 at 02:19:50PM +0200, Frederic Weisbecker escreveu:
> > > > On Tue, Oct 20, 2015 at 09:00:34AM -0300, Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo wrote:
> > > > > Em Mon, Oct 19, 2015 at 05:16:53PM -0700, Brendan Gregg escreveu:
> > > > > So are you advocating different defaults, one for --stdio (callee),
> > > > > another for --tui, --gtk (caller)?
> > > 
> > > > > This is all configurable via ~/.perfconfig :-\
> > > 
> > > > > Indeed, finding a default that is deemed adequate for most people is,
> > > > > ho-hum, difficult 8-)
> > >  
> > > > Most uses I've seen on LKML by the past involved callee because people
> > > > mostly look at the precise point where a performance issue is.
> > > 
> > > A good chunk of that was because that was the default?
> > 
> > I doubt it. When you need to find the culprit of a syscall of IRQ performance issue,
> > you don't care much to see __libc_start_main() / main() on the top of your callchain.
> 
> And I noticed some other shortcoming of this ordering (caller) the stack
> closer to userspace in a typical perf.data with callchains (perf record
> -g) can have bogus addresses (-fomit-frame-pointer) :-\

Maybe we need to add an option to ignore unresolved callchains?


>  
> > > > IMHO changing that order is not a good idea. Unless many users complained
> > > > about it.
> > > 
> > > Perhaps there are not that many users of callchains because the default
> > > is not what they're used to see?
> > > 
> > > Motivation for the change came from a video from Chandler, that
> > > resurfaced the callchain default issue, Chandler?
> > > 
> > > Anedoctally, he tweeted about it and people seemed to like it.
> > 
> > Well, I would prefer to hear from regular users than random twitter followers.
> > I could be wrong so lets ask some users first.
> 
> That is why I put the "anedoctaly" :-)
>  
> > > > > Ingo, what do you think?
> > > 
> > > What about providing a hotkey, in the tui, to toggle caller/callee
> > > views, and another hotkey to save that in ~/.perfconfig so that becomes
> > > the new default?
>  
> > That means rebuilding the whole tree, it might be costly and events need to
> > be processed again.
> 
> I never tried to reimplement that with going to/from caller/caller in
> mind, should do at some point, but yeah, reprocessing all entries can be
> way costly.

Right.  Anyway it seems useful to update config dynamically.  I really
need to take a look at Taeung's config patchset..


>  
> > > In the --stdio mode we need to add a warning in the first lines,
> > > something like:
> > > 
> > > # This is caller (or callee) based, please use --callchain ... to change it
> > > 
> > > One way or the other people will disagree, so making it easy to switch
> > > to the preferred way would be nice to have?
> > 
> > Agreed.
> 
> I'll probably revert this change in default and provide some way to
> change it dynamically, just waiting a some more time for more comments.

Agreed.

Thanks,
Namhyung