[v3,bpf-next,0/3] libbpf: BTF writer APIs

Message

Andrii Nakryiko Sept. 29, 2020, 2:05 a.m. UTC

This patch set introduces a new set of BTF APIs to libbpf that allow to
conveniently produce BTF types and strings. These APIs will allow libbpf to do
more intrusive modifications of program's BTF (by rewriting it, at least as of
right now), which is necessary for the upcoming libbpf static linking. But
they are complete and generic, so can be adopted by anyone who has a need to
produce BTF type information.

One such example outside of libbpf is pahole, which was actually converted to
these APIs (locally, pending landing of these changes in libbpf) completely
and shows reduction in amount of custom pahole code necessary and brings nice
savings in memory usage (about 370MB reduction at peak for my kernel
configuration) and even BTF deduplication times (one second reduction,
23.7s -> 22.7s). Memory savings are due to avoiding pahole's own copy of
"uncompressed" raw BTF data. Time reduction comes from faster string
search and deduplication by relying on hashmap instead of BST used by pahole's
own code. Consequently, these APIs are already tested on real-world
complicated kernel BTF, but there is also pretty extensive selftest doing
extra validations.

Selftests in patch #3 add a set of generic ASSERT_{EQ,STREQ,ERR,OK} macros
that are useful for writing shorter and less repretitive selftests. I decided
to keep them local to that selftest for now, but if they prove to be useful in
more contexts we should move them to test_progs.h. And few more (e.g.,
inequality tests) macros are probably necessary to have a more complete set.

Cc: Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo <[e-mail]>

v2->v3:
  - resending original patches #7-9 as patches #1-3 due to merge conflict;

v1->v2:
  - fixed comments (John);
  - renamed btf__append_xxx() into btf__add_xxx() (Alexei);
  - added btf__find_str() in addition to btf__add_str();
  - btf__new_empty() now sets kernel FD to -1 initially.

Andrii Nakryiko (3):
  libbpf: add BTF writing APIs
  libbpf: add btf__str_by_offset() as a more generic variant of
    name_by_offset
  selftests/bpf: test BTF writing APIs

 tools/lib/bpf/btf.c                           | 796 +++++++++++++++++-
 tools/lib/bpf/btf.h                           |  39 +
 tools/lib/bpf/libbpf.map                      |  20 +
 .../selftests/bpf/prog_tests/btf_write.c      | 278 ++++++
 4 files changed, 1128 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 tools/testing/selftests/bpf/prog_tests/btf_write.c

Comments

Alexei Starovoitov Sept. 29, 2020, 2:26 a.m. UTC | #1

On Mon, Sep 28, 2020 at 7:06 PM Andrii Nakryiko <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
> This patch set introduces a new set of BTF APIs to libbpf that allow to
> conveniently produce BTF types and strings. These APIs will allow libbpf to do
> more intrusive modifications of program's BTF (by rewriting it, at least as of
> right now), which is necessary for the upcoming libbpf static linking. But
> they are complete and generic, so can be adopted by anyone who has a need to
> produce BTF type information.
>
> One such example outside of libbpf is pahole, which was actually converted to
> these APIs (locally, pending landing of these changes in libbpf) completely
> and shows reduction in amount of custom pahole code necessary and brings nice
> savings in memory usage (about 370MB reduction at peak for my kernel
> configuration) and even BTF deduplication times (one second reduction,
> 23.7s -> 22.7s). Memory savings are due to avoiding pahole's own copy of
> "uncompressed" raw BTF data. Time reduction comes from faster string
> search and deduplication by relying on hashmap instead of BST used by pahole's
> own code. Consequently, these APIs are already tested on real-world
> complicated kernel BTF, but there is also pretty extensive selftest doing
> extra validations.
>
> Selftests in patch #3 add a set of generic ASSERT_{EQ,STREQ,ERR,OK} macros
> that are useful for writing shorter and less repretitive selftests. I decided
> to keep them local to that selftest for now, but if they prove to be useful in
> more contexts we should move them to test_progs.h. And few more (e.g.,
> inequality tests) macros are probably necessary to have a more complete set.
>
> Cc: Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo <[e-mail]>
>
> v2->v3:
>   - resending original patches #7-9 as patches #1-3 due to merge conflict;

Applied. Thanks

[e-mail] Sept. 29, 2020, 12:20 p.m. UTC | #2

Hello:

This series was applied to bpf/bpf-next.git (refs/heads/master):

On Mon, 28 Sep 2020 19:05:29 -0700 you wrote:
> This patch set introduces a new set of BTF APIs to libbpf that allow to
> conveniently produce BTF types and strings. These APIs will allow libbpf to do
> more intrusive modifications of program's BTF (by rewriting it, at least as of
> right now), which is necessary for the upcoming libbpf static linking. But
> they are complete and generic, so can be adopted by anyone who has a need to
> produce BTF type information.
> 
> [...]

Here is the summary with links:
  - [v3,bpf-next,1/3] libbpf: add BTF writing APIs
    https://git.kernel.org/bpf/bpf-next/c/4a3b33f8579a
  - [v3,bpf-next,2/3] libbpf: add btf__str_by_offset() as a more generic variant of name_by_offset
    https://git.kernel.org/bpf/bpf-next/c/f86ed050bcee
  - [v3,bpf-next,3/3] selftests/bpf: test BTF writing APIs
    https://git.kernel.org/bpf/bpf-next/c/9141f75a3279

You are awesome, thank you!
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