Several tracepoints use the helper functions __print_symbolic() or
__print_flags() and pass in enums that do the mapping between the
binary data stored and the value to print. This works well for reading
the ASCII trace files, but when the data is read via userspace tools
such as perf and trace-cmd, the conversion of the binary value to a
human string format is lost if an enum is used, as userspace does not
have access to what the ENUM is.

For example, the tracepoint trace_tlb_flush() has:

 __print_symbolic(REC->reason,
    { TLB_FLUSH_ON_TASK_SWITCH, "flush on task switch" },
    { TLB_REMOTE_SHOOTDOWN, "remote shootdown" },
    { TLB_LOCAL_SHOOTDOWN, "local shootdown" },
    { TLB_LOCAL_MM_SHOOTDOWN, "local mm shootdown" })

Which maps the enum values to the strings they represent. But perf and
trace-cmd do no know what value TLB_LOCAL_MM_SHOOTDOWN is, and would
not be able to map it.

With TRACE_DEFINE_ENUM(), developers can place these in the event header
files and ftrace will convert the enums to their values:

By adding:

 TRACE_DEFINE_ENUM(TLB_FLUSH_ON_TASK_SWITCH);
 TRACE_DEFINE_ENUM(TLB_REMOTE_SHOOTDOWN);
 TRACE_DEFINE_ENUM(TLB_LOCAL_SHOOTDOWN);
 TRACE_DEFINE_ENUM(TLB_LOCAL_MM_SHOOTDOWN);

 $ cat /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/events/tlb/tlb_flush/format
[...]
 __print_symbolic(REC->reason,
    { 0, "flush on task switch" },
    { 1, "remote shootdown" },
    { 2, "local shootdown" },
    { 3, "local mm shootdown" })

The above is what userspace expects to see, and tools do not need to
be modified to parse them.

Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20150403013802.220157513@goodmis.org



Cc: Guilherme Cox <cox@computer.org>
Cc: Tony Luck <tony.luck@gmail.com>
Cc: Xie XiuQi <xiexiuqi@huawei.com>
Acked-by: Namhyung Kim <namhyung@kernel.org>
Reviewed-by: Masami Hiramatsu <masami.hiramatsu.pt@hitachi.com>
Tested-by: Masami Hiramatsu <masami.hiramatsu.pt@hitachi.com>
Signed-off-by: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>