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Re: RFC: ideas for release notes for the next release
- From: Mark Wielaard <mjw at redhat dot com>
- To: David Smith <dsmith at redhat dot com>
- Cc: Systemtap List <systemtap at sources dot redhat dot com>
- Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2009 19:01:15 +0000
- Subject: Re: RFC: ideas for release notes for the next release
- References: <49EF7A27.6000400@redhat.com>
Hi David,
On Wed, 2009-04-22 at 15:12 -0500, David Smith wrote:
> We wanted to push out a new (0.9.6?) release this week. Below are
> some suggestions for the release notes. Please read through them and
> suggest additions/fixes.
>
> The systemtap team announces release 0.9.XXX.
I would start with a short one-paragraph highlights, that news sites can
(re)use. Something like:
"kprobes dwarfless probing, netter uprobes shared library support,
experimental user space unwinding, better static user space .mark
and .label -l listings, improved signal handling (to use stap in
script), tcp packet receive tracing, updates for latest kernel"
Some other improvements not already mentioned:
Language improvements:
- support up to 9 (up from 5) array index dimensions.
New tapset functions:
- symname, symdata and modname kernel context functions.
- errno_p() function that will return an absolute errno if it is valid.
- ANSI escape sequences tapset
- New TCP and IP functions, tcp.receive() can be used to trace packets.
New examples:
- process/errsnoop.stp
Tabulate system call errors.
- network/tcp.stp
A simple TCP tapset example
- network/tcpdumplike.stp
Dump of Received TCP Packets
- network/dropwatch.stp
Watch Where Socket Buffers are Freed in the Kernel
Other:
- graphing widget (is this enabled by default now?)
I added the following to the NEWS file, which I think might also be
interesting for the announcement:
- EXPERIMENTAL support for user process unwinding. A new collection of
tapset functions have been added to handle user space backtraces from
probe points that support them (currently process and timer probes -
for timer probes test whether or not in user space first with the
already existing user_mode() function). The new tapset functions are:
uaddr - User space address of current running task.
usymname - Return the symbol of an address in the current task.
usymdata - Return the symbol and module offset of an address.
print_ustack - Print out stack for the current task from string.
print_ubacktrace - Print stack back trace for current task.
ubacktrace - Hex backtrace of current task stack.
Please read http://sourceware.org/ml/systemtap/2009-q2/msg00364.html
on the current restrictions and possible changes in the future and
give feedback if you want to influence future developments.
> = Test results on various systems
>
> After running "sudo make installcheck" from the test suite, on a
> suitably equipped machine (kernel debugging data and other stuff
> installed), you should see 500-600 passes and a small handful of
> failures.
800-850 passes and a dozen failures.
Cheers,
Mark