Getting libtraceevent into a packaged library

Getting libtraceevent into a packaged library

[Steven Rostedt]

Hello folks,

I've Cc'd everyone that might be interested in helping package
libtraceveent. It is basically ready to become a full library package.
I only have a couple of patches to deal with SPDX headers and such, but
other than that, I think we are good to go.

My question is now, how to we go about having distributions package it.
Like perf, the main source code lives in the Linux kernel source tree
under:

 tools/lib/traceevent

I'd like to install the following headers in /usr/include

  event-parse.h
  kbuffer.h
  trace-seq.h

And the following libraries:

  libtraceevent.so (with all its versions)

Documentation man pages are in the Documentation directory.

And we should have plugins installed as well.

If we had done everything correctly, a "make install" in that directory
will move all the files to their proper location.

make doc will create the man pages.

make doc-install will install the man pages.

What's the next step to get this into a package so that perf,
trace-cmd, power-top, rasdaemon, uftrace, and whatever does not need to
have its own copy of the code, but instead link to it.

Note, the interface has changed since other tools copied it, and I'm
willing to help anyone out in porting to the package.

Let me know of anyone else that can help in getting this packaged for a
Linux distribution.

-- Steve

Re: Getting libtraceevent into a packaged library

[Tony Jones]

On 10/3/19 12:01 PM, Steven Rostedt wrote:

> My question is now, how to we go about having distributions package it.
> Like perf, the main source code lives in the Linux kernel source tree
> under:
> 
>   tools/lib/traceevent

We're happy to look into this.

> What's the next step to get this into a package so that perf,
> trace-cmd, power-top, rasdaemon, uftrace, and whatever does not need to
> have its own copy of the code, but instead link to it.

If building perf from source (git) it would be useful to be able to select either the lib/traceevent in the tree (probably
should be the default) or the libtraceevent installed via rpm/etc.   Obviously the later is a pre-requisite to being able
to package perf with a rpm build-requires on the libtraceevent-devel rpm.

> Let me know of anyone else that can help in getting this packaged for a
> Linux distribution.

Tony

Re: Getting libtraceevent into a packaged library

[Namhyung Kim]

Hi Steve,

On Fri, Oct 4, 2019 at 4:01 AM Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org> wrote:
> What's the next step to get this into a package so that perf,
> trace-cmd, power-top, rasdaemon, uftrace, and whatever does not need to
> have its own copy of the code, but instead link to it.
>
> Note, the interface has changed since other tools copied it, and I'm
> willing to help anyone out in porting to the package.

For uftrace, I think it needs to keep the copy of the code for a while
since it should support older versions of distros as well.
I'll add a runtime dependency check for libtraceevent and use
the new APIs if exists.

Thanks,
Namhyung

Re: Getting libtraceevent into a packaged library

[Steven Rostedt]

On Fri, 4 Oct 2019 11:51:12 +0900
Namhyung Kim <namhyung@kernel.org> wrote:

> Hi Steve,
> 
> On Fri, Oct 4, 2019 at 4:01 AM Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org> wrote:
> > What's the next step to get this into a package so that perf,
> > trace-cmd, power-top, rasdaemon, uftrace, and whatever does not need to
> > have its own copy of the code, but instead link to it.
> >
> > Note, the interface has changed since other tools copied it, and I'm
> > willing to help anyone out in porting to the package.  
> 
> For uftrace, I think it needs to keep the copy of the code for a while
> since it should support older versions of distros as well.
> I'll add a runtime dependency check for libtraceevent and use
> the new APIs if exists.
> 

What do you mean by support older distros? You mean older distros
not having the library (a user could always just download the source
code and compile it themselves :-) Or handling the trace events,
because libtraceevent should be able to handle older kernels.

-- Steve

Re: Getting libtraceevent into a packaged library

[Namhyung Kim]

Hi Steve,

On Fri, Oct 4, 2019 at 10:33 PM Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org> wrote:
>
> On Fri, 4 Oct 2019 11:51:12 +0900
> Namhyung Kim <namhyung@kernel.org> wrote:
>
> > Hi Steve,
> >
> > On Fri, Oct 4, 2019 at 4:01 AM Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org> wrote:
> > > What's the next step to get this into a package so that perf,
> > > trace-cmd, power-top, rasdaemon, uftrace, and whatever does not need to
> > > have its own copy of the code, but instead link to it.
> > >
> > > Note, the interface has changed since other tools copied it, and I'm
> > > willing to help anyone out in porting to the package.
> >
> > For uftrace, I think it needs to keep the copy of the code for a while
> > since it should support older versions of distros as well.
> > I'll add a runtime dependency check for libtraceevent and use
> > the new APIs if exists.
> >
>
> What do you mean by support older distros? You mean older distros
> not having the library (a user could always just download the source
> code and compile it themselves :-) Or handling the trace events,
> because libtraceevent should be able to handle older kernels.

Oh, I meant the former.

Thanks
Namhyung