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docs/devel: document some plugin assumptions

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While we attempt to hide implementation details from the plugin we
shouldn't be totally obtuse. Let the user know what they can and can't
expect with the various instrumentation options.

Reviewed-by: Pierrick Bouvier <pierrick.bouvier@linaro.org>
Signed-off-by: Alex Bennée <alex.bennee@linaro.org>
Message-Id: <20240227144335.1196131-29-alex.bennee@linaro.org>
This commit is contained in:
Alex Bennée 2024-02-27 14:43:34 +00:00
parent b0b3c0f562
commit f87b220f2a
1 changed files with 49 additions and 0 deletions
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docs/devel/tcg-plugins.rst
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@ -112,6 +112,55 @@ details are opaque to plugins. The plugin is able to query select
details of instructions and system configuration only through the
exported *qemu_plugin* functions.
However the following assumptions can be made:
Translation Blocks
++++++++++++++++++
All code will go through a translation phase although not all
translations will be necessarily be executed. You need to instrument
actual executions to track what is happening.
It is quite normal to see the same address translated multiple times.
If you want to track the code in system emulation you should examine
the underlying physical address (``qemu_plugin_insn_haddr``) to take
into account the effects of virtual memory although if the system does
paging this will change too.
Not all instructions in a block will always execute so if its
important to track individual instruction execution you need to
instrument them directly. However asynchronous interrupts will not
change control flow mid-block.
Instructions
++++++++++++
Instruction instrumentation runs before the instruction executes. You
can be can be sure the instruction will be dispatched, but you can't
be sure it will complete. Generally this will be because of a
synchronous exception (e.g. SIGILL) triggered by the instruction
attempting to execute. If you want to be sure you will need to
instrument the next instruction as well. See the ``execlog.c`` plugin
for examples of how to track this and finalise details after execution.
Memory Accesses
+++++++++++++++
Memory callbacks are called after a successful load or store.
Unsuccessful operations (i.e. faults) will not be visible to memory
instrumentation although the execution side effects can be observed
(e.g. entering a exception handler).
System Idle and Resume States
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The ``qemu_plugin_register_vcpu_idle_cb`` and
``qemu_plugin_register_vcpu_resume_cb`` functions can be used to track
when CPUs go into and return from sleep states when waiting for
external I/O. Be aware though that these may occur less frequently
than in real HW due to the inefficiencies of emulation giving less
chance for the CPU to idle.
Internals
---------