7ac1547f32
Allow internal BTF representation to switch from default read-only mode, in which raw BTF data is a single non-modifiable block of memory with BTF header, types, and strings layed out sequentially and contiguously in memory, into a writable representation with types and strings data split out into separate memory regions, that can be dynamically expanded. Such writable internal representation is transparent to users of libbpf APIs, but allows to append new types and strings at the end of BTF, which is a typical use case when generating BTF programmatically. All the basic guarantees of BTF types and strings layout is preserved, i.e., user can get `struct btf_type *` pointer and read it directly. Such btf_type pointers might be invalidated if BTF is modified, so some care is required in such mixed read/write scenarios. Switch from read-only to writable configuration happens automatically the first time when user attempts to modify BTF by either adding a new type or new string. It is still possible to get raw BTF data, which is a single piece of memory that can be persisted in ELF section or into a file as raw BTF. Such raw data memory is also still owned by BTF and will be freed either when BTF object is freed or if another modification to BTF happens, as any modification invalidates BTF raw representation. This patch adds the first two BTF manipulation APIs: btf__add_str(), which allows to add arbitrary strings to BTF string section, and btf__find_str() which allows to find existing string offset, but not add it if it's missing. All the added strings are automatically deduplicated. This is achieved by maintaining an additional string lookup index for all unique strings. Such index is built when BTF is switched to modifiable mode. If at that time BTF strings section contained duplicate strings, they are not de-duplicated. This is done specifically to not modify the existing content of BTF (types, their string offsets, etc), which can cause confusion and is especially important property if there is struct btf_ext associated with struct btf. By following this "imperfect deduplication" process, btf_ext is kept consitent and correct. If deduplication of strings is necessary, it can be forced by doing BTF deduplication, at which point all the strings will be eagerly deduplicated and all string offsets both in struct btf and struct btf_ext will be updated. Signed-off-by: Andrii Nakryiko <andriin@fb.com> Signed-off-by: Alexei Starovoitov <ast@kernel.org> Acked-by: John Fastabend <john.fastabend@gmail.com> Link: https://lore.kernel.org/bpf/20200926011357.2366158-6-andriin@fb.com
This is a mirror of bpf-next Linux source
tree's
tools/lib/bpf directory plus its supporting header files.
All the gory details of syncing can be found in scripts/sync-kernel.sh
script.
Some header files in this repo (include/linux/*.h) are reduced versions of
their counterpart files at
bpf-next's
tools/include/linux/*.h to make compilation successful.
BPF questions
All general BPF questions, including kernel functionality, libbpf APIs and their application, should be sent to bpf@vger.kernel.org mailing list. You can subscribe to it here and search its archive here. Please search the archive before asking new questions. It very well might be that this was already addressed or answered before.
bpf@vger.kernel.org is monitored by many more people and they will happily try to help you with whatever issue you have. This repository's PRs and issues should be opened only for dealing with issues pertaining to specific way this libbpf mirror repo is set up and organized.
Build
libelf is an internal dependency of libbpf and thus it is required to link
against and must be installed on the system for applications to work.
pkg-config is used by default to find libelf, and the program called can be
overridden with PKG_CONFIG.
If using pkg-config at build time is not desired, it can be disabled by
setting NO_PKG_CONFIG=1 when calling make.
To build both static libbpf.a and shared libbpf.so:
$ cd src
$ make
To build only static libbpf.a library in directory build/ and install them together with libbpf headers in a staging directory root/:
$ cd src
$ mkdir build root
$ BUILD_STATIC_ONLY=y OBJDIR=build DESTDIR=root make install
To build both static libbpf.a and shared libbpf.so against a custom libelf dependency installed in /build/root/ and install them together with libbpf headers in a build directory /build/root/:
$ cd src
$ PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/build/root/lib64/pkgconfig DESTDIR=/build/root make install
Distributions
Distributions packaging libbpf from this mirror:
Benefits of packaging from the mirror over packaging from kernel sources:
- Consistent versioning across distributions.
- No ties to any specific kernel, transparent handling of older kernels. Libbpf is designed to be kernel-agnostic and work across multitude of kernel versions. It has built-in mechanisms to gracefully handle older kernels, that are missing some of the features, by working around or gracefully degrading functionality. Thus libbpf is not tied to a specific kernel version and can/should be packaged and versioned independently.
- Continuous integration testing via TravisCI.
- Static code analysis via LGTM and Coverity.
Package dependencies of libbpf, package names may vary across distros:
- zlib
- libelf
BPF CO-RE (Compile Once – Run Everywhere)
Libbpf supports building BPF CO-RE-enabled applications, which, in contrast to BCC, do not require Clang/LLVM runtime being deployed to target servers and doesn't rely on kernel-devel headers being available.
It does rely on kernel to be built with BTF type information, though. Some major Linux distributions come with kernel BTF already built in:
- Fedora 31+
- RHEL 8.2+
- OpenSUSE Tumbleweed (in the next release, as of 2020-06-04)
- Arch Linux (from kernel 5.7.1.arch1-1)
If your kernel doesn't come with BTF built-in, you'll need to build custom kernel. You'll need:
pahole1.16+ tool (part ofdwarvespackage), which performs DWARF to BTF conversion;- kernel built with
CONFIG_DEBUG_INFO_BTF=yoption; - you can check if your kernel has BTF built-in by looking for
/sys/kernel/btf/vmlinuxfile:
$ ls -la /sys/kernel/btf/vmlinux
-r--r--r--. 1 root root 3541561 Jun 2 18:16 /sys/kernel/btf/vmlinux
To develop and build BPF programs, you'll need Clang/LLVM 10+. The following distributions have Clang/LLVM 10+ packaged by default:
- Fedora 32+
- Ubuntu 20.04+
- Arch Linux
Otherwise, please make sure to update it on your system.
The following resources are useful to understand what BPF CO-RE is and how to use it:
- BPF Portability and CO-RE
- HOWTO: BCC to libbpf conversion
- libbpf-tools in BCC repo contain lots of real-world tools converted from BCC to BPF CO-RE. Consider converting some more to both contribute to the BPF community and gain some more experience with it.
License
This work is dual-licensed under BSD 2-clause license and GNU LGPL v2.1 license. You can choose between one of them if you use this work.
SPDX-License-Identifier: BSD-2-Clause OR LGPL-2.1