Re: [PATCH 00/10] [RFC v2] quick dump

From: Ben Widawsky <ben@bwidawsk.net>
To: Chris Wilson <chris@chris-wilson.co.uk>,
	Jesse Barnes <jbarnes@virtuousgeek.org>,
	intel-gfx@lists.freedesktop.org,
	vincent.beng.keat.cheah@intel.com,
	alan.previn.teres.alexis@intel.com
Subject: Re: [PATCH 00/10] [RFC v2] quick dump
Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2013 10:13:10 -0800	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20130203181310.GA22639@lundgren.kumite> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20130203122225.GC9892@cantiga.alporthouse.com>

On Sun, Feb 03, 2013 at 12:22:25PM +0000, Chris Wilson wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 03, 2013 at 10:29:15AM +0100, Jesse Barnes wrote:
> > On Sat,  2 Feb 2013 16:07:52 -0800
> > Ben Widawsky <ben@bwidawsk.net> wrote:
> > 
> > > This is my second attempt at winning approval for the series. First one
> > > was: https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/1493131/
> > > 
> > > In spending the time to rework this tool, I've begun to lose my belief
> > > in some of the original motivations I had.  Even if you don't want to
> > > review, but just like (or dislike) what you see, I'd appreciate such
> > > comments.
> > 
> > I'd like to see it land in i-g-t.  Having the regs defined in a text or
> > xml file is an improvement over what we have today, and is easier to
> > extend.  At first the advantage of reg_dumper was that it parsed out
> > the bitfields of the various regs.  But we didn't keep up with that,
> > and also haven't kept up with the regs on new platforms as well as we
> > could.  Text files would make that easier, and xml files might bring
> > back the bit field parsing, which would be extra nice.
> 
> Completely agree. For me the big improvement would be being able to use
> the bspec register names or our internal approximation thereof rather
> than having to loop up the actual addresses every time. 
> 
> Having the name database available in python should make building
> integrated little snippets to parse traces which are also python
> accessible.
> -Chris

It's really nice to get support from you. A mix of fever and staring at
the same code too long can really make someone go crazy. Still, a few
concerns left from me, one of which I accidentally left out of the
description.

- Someone needs to give me a yes or no on the m4 extension macros. This
  will block any pushing.
- The build kind of sucks on Arch because of Arch's choices regarding
  python libraries. To build this on Arch, you must run something like:
  ./autogen.sh PYTHON_LDFLAGS="-L/usr/lib/python3.3 -lpython3.3m"
  I really don't like autogen not working out of the box. Perhaps I need
  to add an AC_ flag to default this tool to off? What do others think?
  Does it work properly on other distros? How to handle this?
- Ideally, I'd like someone to send me some fixes for valleyview
  definitions if they're needed. I am not sure.

Jesse, if you can send me a list of DPIO offsets to read, I'll add the
appropriate patch. (It can wait until you get back).

-- 
Ben Widawsky, Intel Open Source Technology Center