Queries regarding Tracing related bugs and GSoC 2017

[vivek kukreja]

Hello developers,

I have worked on CTF tracing last year under GSoC. I was working on my
previous deliverables and i noticed there are some bugs in the current
capture and function tracing examples on qemu for arm/xilinx_zynq_a9,
related to recent updates made to TCB and termios implementation. I'm
working on resolving these issues so I can merge my previous changes.
I have mailed Chris regarding this and I was suggested to ping the
developer list for further clarification on these errors, and whether
I should create any tickets.

I also wanted to enquire about the status of the Live tracing project
this year in GSoC. I'm considering the following ideas for a proposal,
once the tracing support is re-established:

1. libDWARF integration: I've been studying libDWARF for
functionalities that can be ported to RTEMS, for the purpose of
finding function signatures and variable types to be traced by the
trace linker. This can be used to auto-configure the signatures/types
at the trace linking phase of an application.

2. Transports API: In GSoC 2016 I worked on transport for moving
traces to host. I investigated serial and USB transport apart from
ethernet using libBSD. There is discussion on the Tracing projects
page about integrating all transports and providing an API for custom
transports in the application for both capture and function tracing.

3. Live tracing: In capture tracing, the trace process has to be
paused before reading the trace (as discussed with Jennifer Averrett,
the previous contributor). I'm looking at alternatives like copying
the unsafe buffer to a new one which can in turn be dumped on host
using NFS or other transport options. We can create a low priority
task for this purpose, along with the trace buffering functions
defined in rtld-trace-buffer.ini.

Please suggest any improvements or additions to the above ideas. Also
I dont know if there is any interest in this project for GSoC 2017 but
I would like to merge my previous changes soon nonetheless.

Regards,
Vivek