Re: [hatari-devel] trace output format

[Nicolas Pomarède <npomarede@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 10/08/2013 19:13, Eero Tamminen wrote:
> IMHO if there are common fields in different traces, I think they
> should be at the start of the trace with fixed widths, so that they
> get aligned.  That makes reading traces with lots of similar lines
> easier.
>
> Only common field in IO trace is PC address, that's why I added it at
> the start, with fixed width.

Without requiring to have a fixed length (which can make trace file 
unnecesseray big when using "--trace all" due to all the added 
"spaces"), the fact to have it in the 1st column seems enough to me if 
you want to do manipulations later on a full log file to filter some 
lines (having the trace type in the 1st column is easy to get with "grep 
^xxxxxx" or with awk '{print $1}')

As not all traces need a PC, I think it should be kept at the end of the 
line.

> Because PC address info is useful with most (all?) of the traces,
> my counter-proposal is that it would be output automatically by
> LOG_TRACE() macro, to the start of the trace line, and removed
> from current LOG_TRACE() call sites.

I don't think PC address should be automatically added in traces. Some 
traces are not related to a cpu's action. For example, aci, ikbd, fdc, 
blitter or dma sound can generate traces on their own without a cpu 
instruction being involved.
LOG_TRACE is also used in DSP, where no cpu PC is available, so getting 
PC values inside LOG_TRACE is not necessary someting straight forward.

So, I'd rather keep log_trace as simple as it is now and leave it to 
each component to choose the necessary level of details it wants to display.


Nicolas