perf record: Add ability to name registers to record

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 <eranian@google.com>
Tested-by: Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo <acme@redhat.com>
Cc: Adrian Hunter <adrian.hunter@intel.com>
Cc: Andi Kleen <ak@linux.intel.com>
Cc: David Ahern <dsahern@gmail.com>
Cc: Jiri Olsa <jolsa@redhat.com>
Cc: Kan Liang <kan.liang@intel.com>
Cc: Namhyung Kim <namhyung@kernel.org>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1441039273-16260-4-git-send-email-eranian@google.com
Signed-off-by: Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo <acme@redhat.com>

1 files changed, 5 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/tools/perf/util/parse-regs-options.h b/tools/perf/util/parse-regs-options.h
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..7d762b188007
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tools/perf/util/parse-regs-options.h
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+#ifndef _PERF_PARSE_REGS_OPTIONS_H
+#define _PERF_PARSE_REGS_OPTIONS_H 1
+struct option;
+int parse_regs(const struct option *opt, const char *str, int unset);
+#endif /* _PERF_PARSE_REGS_OPTIONS_H */