cloud-hypervisor/docs/tracing.md
Rob Bradford e53419ecfc docs: Add documentation of tracing infrastructure
Signed-off-by: Rob Bradford <robert.bradford@intel.com>
2022-09-22 18:09:31 +01:00

1.4 KiB

Tracing

Cloud Hypervisor has a basic tracing infrastucture, particularly focussed on the tracing of the initial VM setup.

Usage

To enabling tracing, build with "tracing" feature. When compiled without the feature the tracing is compiled out.

cargo build --features "tracing"

And then run Cloud Hypervisor as you wish, the trace will be written to the current directory as cloud-hypervisor-<pid>.trace. This is JSON file which you can inspect yourself.

Alternatively you can use the provided script in scripts/ch-trace-visualiser.py to generate an SVG:

For example:

scripts/ch-trace-visualiser.py cloud-hypervisor-39466.trace output.svg

Tracing in the codebase

There are existing tracepoints in the code base; extra ones can be added for more detailed tracing.

The tracer::trace_scoped!() macro is used to add the current existing scope appears as a block in the trace. Other than providing a useful name for the event nothing else is required from the developer.

The tracer::start() and tracer::end() functions are already in place for generating traces of the boot. These can be relocated for focus tracing on a narrow part of the code base.

A tracer::trace_point!() macro is also provided for an instantaneous trace point however this is not in use in the code base currently nor is handled by the visualisation script due to the difficulty in representation in the SVG.