perf record: Add ability to name registers to record

2015-08-31T21:01:33Z

This patch modifies the -I/--int-regs option to enablepassing the name of the registers to sample on interrupt. Registers can be specified by their symbolic names. For instance on x86, --intr-regs=ax,si. The motivation is to reduce the size of the perf.data file and the overhead of sampling by only collecting the registers useful to a specific analysis. For instance, for value profiling, sampling only the registers used to passed arguements to functions. With no parameter, the --intr-regs still records all possible registers based on the architecture. To name registers, it is necessary to use the long form of the option, i.e., --intr-regs: $ perf record --intr-regs=si,di,r8,r9 ..... To record any possible registers: $ perf record -I ..... $ perf report --intr-regs ... To display the register, one can use perf report -D To list the available registers: $ perf record --intr-regs=\? available registers: AX BX CX DX SI DI BP SP IP FLAGS CS SS R8 R9 R10 R11 R12 R13 R14 R15 Signed-off-by: Stephane Eranian Tested-by: Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo Cc: Adrian Hunter Cc: Andi Kleen Cc: David Ahern Cc: Jiri Olsa Cc: Kan Liang Cc: Namhyung Kim Cc: Peter Zijlstra Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1441039273-16260-4-git-send-email-eranian@google.com Signed-off-by: Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo

kernel/tools/perf/util/parse-regs-options.h, branch linux-4.3.y

perf record: Add ability to name registers to record