[LITMUS^RT] RFC: kernel-style events for Litmus^RT

[Björn Brandenburg]

On Feb 16, 2012, at 9:39 AM, Andrea Bastoni wrote:

>>> 
>>> Chris, Glenn, Mac, and I are pro abandoning unit-trace for kernel visualization. Bjoern and Andrea, what do
>>> you think about this? Going forward, I would see us dropping unit-trace for kernel visualization, but could
>>> we replace sched_trace entirely in the long term? Would we want to?
>> 
>> As long as there is a tool to convert a trace in the new Linux format to a traditional sched_trace file I'm fine with ripping out the old implementation. At MPI, we use the feather-trace and sched-trace format for non-LITMUS^RT projects as well, so I'm not in favor of retiring all associated tools.
> 
> I'm for evaluating the new trace framework for a while, and then
> decide whether we can substitute the sched_trace framework entirely.
> In the meanwhile we can evaluate how easy it is to create converter(s)
> for the traditional sched_trace file format.
> I believe the maintenance overhead of keeping both the tracing
> frameworks for a while shouldn't be very high (the only contact point
> is in the sched_trace_XXX macros in include/litmus/sched_trace.h).

One of the advantages of the sched_trace format is its simplicity. It's easy to stick it into other systems. It's not so easy to stick Linux's tracing infrastructure into non-Linux projects. Instead of exporting Linuxisms to other projects, it's much easier to support LITMUS^RT  in Linux.

- Björn