History log of /linux-master/kernel/gcov/fs.c
Revision Date Author Comments
# fbd126f5 22-Sep-2023 Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>

gcov: annotate struct gcov_iterator with __counted_by

Prepare for the coming implementation by GCC and Clang of the __counted_by
attribute. Flexible array members annotated with __counted_by can have
their accesses bounds-checked at run-time checking via CONFIG_UBSAN_BOUNDS
(for array indexing) and CONFIG_FORTIFY_SOURCE (for strcpy/memcpy-family
functions).

As found with Coccinelle[1], add __counted_by for struct gcov_iterator.

[1] https://github.com/kees/kernel-tools/blob/trunk/coccinelle/examples/counted_by.cocci

Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20230922175220.work.327-kees@kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
Reviewed-by: Gustavo A. R. Silva <gustavoars@kernel.org>
Reviewed-by: Peter Oberparleiter <oberpar@linux.ibm.com>
Cc: Nathan Chancellor <nathan@kernel.org>
Cc: Nick Desaulniers <ndesaulniers@google.com>
Cc: Tom Rix <trix@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>


# 1391efa9 06-May-2021 Johannes Berg <johannes.berg@intel.com>

gcov: use kvmalloc()

Using vmalloc() in gcov is really quite wasteful, many of the objects
allocated are really small (e.g. I've seen 24 bytes.) Use kvmalloc() to
automatically pick the better of kmalloc() or vmalloc() depending on the
size.

[johannes.berg@intel.com: fix clang-11+ build]
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20210412214210.6e1ecca9cdc5.I24459763acf0591d5e6b31c7e3a59890d802f79c@changeid

Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20210315235453.799e7a9d627d.I741d0db096c6f312910f7f1bcdfde0fda20801a4@changeid
Signed-off-by: Johannes Berg <johannes.berg@intel.com>
Reviewed-by: Nick Desaulniers <ndesaulniers@google.com>
Tested-by: Nick Desaulniers <ndesaulniers@google.com>
Cc: Peter Oberparleiter <oberpar@linux.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>


# 3180c44f 06-May-2021 Johannes Berg <johannes.berg@intel.com>

gcov: simplify buffer allocation

Use just a single vmalloc() with struct_size() instead of a separate
kmalloc() for the iter struct.

Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20210315235453.b6de4a92096e.Iac40a5166589cefbff8449e466bd1b38ea7a17af@changeid
Signed-off-by: Johannes Berg <johannes.berg@intel.com>
Cc: Peter Oberparleiter <oberpar@linux.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>


# 7a1d55b9 06-May-2021 Johannes Berg <johannes.berg@intel.com>

gcov: combine common code

There's a lot of duplicated code between gcc and clang implementations,
move it over to fs.c to simplify the code, there's no reason to believe
that for small data like this one would not just implement the simple
convert_to_gcda() function.

Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20210315235453.e3fbb86e99a0.I08a3ee6dbe47ea3e8024956083f162884a958e40@changeid
Signed-off-by: Johannes Berg <johannes.berg@intel.com>
Acked-by: Peter Oberparleiter <oberpar@linux.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>


# f4d74ef6 10-Apr-2020 Vasily Averin <vvs@virtuozzo.com>

kernel/gcov/fs.c: gcov_seq_next() should increase position index

If seq_file .next function does not change position index, read after
some lseek can generate unexpected output.

https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=206283
Signed-off-by: Vasily Averin <vvs@virtuozzo.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Acked-by: Peter Oberparleiter <oberpar@linux.ibm.com>
Cc: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
Cc: Davidlohr Bueso <dave@stgolabs.net>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>
Cc: Manfred Spraul <manfred@colorfullife.com>
Cc: NeilBrown <neilb@suse.com>
Cc: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>
Cc: Waiman Long <longman@redhat.com>
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/f65c6ee7-bd00-f910-2f8a-37cc67e4ff88@virtuozzo.com
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>


# 6524d794 06-Apr-2020 Gustavo A. R. Silva <gustavo@embeddedor.com>

kernel/gcov/fs.c: replace zero-length array with flexible-array member

The current codebase makes use of the zero-length array language extension
to the C90 standard, but the preferred mechanism to declare
variable-length types such as these ones is a flexible array member[1][2],
introduced in C99:

struct foo {
int stuff;
struct boo array[];
};

By making use of the mechanism above, we will get a compiler warning in
case the flexible array does not occur last in the structure, which will
help us prevent some kind of undefined behavior bugs from being
inadvertently introduced[3] to the codebase from now on.

Also, notice that, dynamic memory allocations won't be affected by this
change:

"Flexible array members have incomplete type, and so the sizeof operator
may not be applied. As a quirk of the original implementation of
zero-length arrays, sizeof evaluates to zero."[1]

This issue was found with the help of Coccinelle.

[1] https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Zero-Length.html
[2] https://github.com/KSPP/linux/issues/21
[3] commit 76497732932f ("cxgb3/l2t: Fix undefined behaviour")

Signed-off-by: Gustavo A. R. Silva <gustavo@embeddedor.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Peter Oberparleiter <oberpar@linux.ibm.com>
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20200302224851.GA26467@embeddedor
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>


# 1c769fc4 22-Jan-2019 Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>

gcov: no need to check return value of debugfs_create functions

When calling debugfs functions, there is no need to ever check the
return value. The function can work or not, but the code logic should
never do something different based on this.

Also delete the dentry variable as it is never needed.

Acked-by: Peter Oberparleiter <oberpar@linux.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>


# b2441318 01-Nov-2017 Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>

License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no license

Many source files in the tree are missing licensing information, which
makes it harder for compliance tools to determine the correct license.

By default all files without license information are under the default
license of the kernel, which is GPL version 2.

Update the files which contain no license information with the 'GPL-2.0'
SPDX license identifier. The SPDX identifier is a legally binding
shorthand, which can be used instead of the full boiler plate text.

This patch is based on work done by Thomas Gleixner and Kate Stewart and
Philippe Ombredanne.

How this work was done:

Patches were generated and checked against linux-4.14-rc6 for a subset of
the use cases:
- file had no licensing information it it.
- file was a */uapi/* one with no licensing information in it,
- file was a */uapi/* one with existing licensing information,

Further patches will be generated in subsequent months to fix up cases
where non-standard license headers were used, and references to license
had to be inferred by heuristics based on keywords.

The analysis to determine which SPDX License Identifier to be applied to
a file was done in a spreadsheet of side by side results from of the
output of two independent scanners (ScanCode & Windriver) producing SPDX
tag:value files created by Philippe Ombredanne. Philippe prepared the
base worksheet, and did an initial spot review of a few 1000 files.

The 4.13 kernel was the starting point of the analysis with 60,537 files
assessed. Kate Stewart did a file by file comparison of the scanner
results in the spreadsheet to determine which SPDX license identifier(s)
to be applied to the file. She confirmed any determination that was not
immediately clear with lawyers working with the Linux Foundation.

Criteria used to select files for SPDX license identifier tagging was:
- Files considered eligible had to be source code files.
- Make and config files were included as candidates if they contained >5
lines of source
- File already had some variant of a license header in it (even if <5
lines).

All documentation files were explicitly excluded.

The following heuristics were used to determine which SPDX license
identifiers to apply.

- when both scanners couldn't find any license traces, file was
considered to have no license information in it, and the top level
COPYING file license applied.

For non */uapi/* files that summary was:

SPDX license identifier # files
---------------------------------------------------|-------
GPL-2.0 11139

and resulted in the first patch in this series.

If that file was a */uapi/* path one, it was "GPL-2.0 WITH
Linux-syscall-note" otherwise it was "GPL-2.0". Results of that was:

SPDX license identifier # files
---------------------------------------------------|-------
GPL-2.0 WITH Linux-syscall-note 930

and resulted in the second patch in this series.

- if a file had some form of licensing information in it, and was one
of the */uapi/* ones, it was denoted with the Linux-syscall-note if
any GPL family license was found in the file or had no licensing in
it (per prior point). Results summary:

SPDX license identifier # files
---------------------------------------------------|------
GPL-2.0 WITH Linux-syscall-note 270
GPL-2.0+ WITH Linux-syscall-note 169
((GPL-2.0 WITH Linux-syscall-note) OR BSD-2-Clause) 21
((GPL-2.0 WITH Linux-syscall-note) OR BSD-3-Clause) 17
LGPL-2.1+ WITH Linux-syscall-note 15
GPL-1.0+ WITH Linux-syscall-note 14
((GPL-2.0+ WITH Linux-syscall-note) OR BSD-3-Clause) 5
LGPL-2.0+ WITH Linux-syscall-note 4
LGPL-2.1 WITH Linux-syscall-note 3
((GPL-2.0 WITH Linux-syscall-note) OR MIT) 3
((GPL-2.0 WITH Linux-syscall-note) AND MIT) 1

and that resulted in the third patch in this series.

- when the two scanners agreed on the detected license(s), that became
the concluded license(s).

- when there was disagreement between the two scanners (one detected a
license but the other didn't, or they both detected different
licenses) a manual inspection of the file occurred.

- In most cases a manual inspection of the information in the file
resulted in a clear resolution of the license that should apply (and
which scanner probably needed to revisit its heuristics).

- When it was not immediately clear, the license identifier was
confirmed with lawyers working with the Linux Foundation.

- If there was any question as to the appropriate license identifier,
the file was flagged for further research and to be revisited later
in time.

In total, over 70 hours of logged manual review was done on the
spreadsheet to determine the SPDX license identifiers to apply to the
source files by Kate, Philippe, Thomas and, in some cases, confirmation
by lawyers working with the Linux Foundation.

Kate also obtained a third independent scan of the 4.13 code base from
FOSSology, and compared selected files where the other two scanners
disagreed against that SPDX file, to see if there was new insights. The
Windriver scanner is based on an older version of FOSSology in part, so
they are related.

Thomas did random spot checks in about 500 files from the spreadsheets
for the uapi headers and agreed with SPDX license identifier in the
files he inspected. For the non-uapi files Thomas did random spot checks
in about 15000 files.

In initial set of patches against 4.14-rc6, 3 files were found to have
copy/paste license identifier errors, and have been fixed to reflect the
correct identifier.

Additionally Philippe spent 10 hours this week doing a detailed manual
inspection and review of the 12,461 patched files from the initial patch
version early this week with:
- a full scancode scan run, collecting the matched texts, detected
license ids and scores
- reviewing anything where there was a license detected (about 500+
files) to ensure that the applied SPDX license was correct
- reviewing anything where there was no detection but the patch license
was not GPL-2.0 WITH Linux-syscall-note to ensure that the applied
SPDX license was correct

This produced a worksheet with 20 files needing minor correction. This
worksheet was then exported into 3 different .csv files for the
different types of files to be modified.

These .csv files were then reviewed by Greg. Thomas wrote a script to
parse the csv files and add the proper SPDX tag to the file, in the
format that the file expected. This script was further refined by Greg
based on the output to detect more types of files automatically and to
distinguish between header and source .c files (which need different
comment types.) Finally Greg ran the script using the .csv files to
generate the patches.

Reviewed-by: Kate Stewart <kstewart@linuxfoundation.org>
Reviewed-by: Philippe Ombredanne <pombredanne@nexb.com>
Reviewed-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>


# 834b18b2 08-Aug-2014 Fabian Frederick <fabf@skynet.be>

kernel/gcov/fs.c: remove unnecessary null test before debugfs_remove

This fixes checkpatch warning:

WARNING: debugfs_remove(NULL) is safe this check is probably not required

Signed-off-by: Fabian Frederick <fabf@skynet.be>
Cc: Peter Oberparleiter <oberpar@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>


# 1931d433 12-Nov-2013 Andy Shevchenko <andriy.shevchenko@linux.intel.com>

gcov: reuse kbasename helper

To get name of the file from a pathname let's use kbasename() helper.

Signed-off-by: Andy Shevchenko <andriy.shevchenko@linux.intel.com>
Cc: Jingoo Han <jg1.han@samsung.com>
Cc: Peter Oberparleiter <peter.oberparleiter@de.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>


# a5ebb875 12-Nov-2013 Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>

kernel/gcov/fs.c: use pr_warn()

pr_warning() is deprecated in favor of pr_warn()

Cc: Andy Gospodarek <agospoda@redhat.com>
Cc: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>
Cc: Frantisek Hrbata <fhrbata@redhat.com>
Cc: Jan Stancek <jstancek@redhat.com>
Cc: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
Cc: Peter Oberparleiter <peter.oberparleiter@de.ibm.com>
Cc: Rusty Russell <rusty@rustcorp.com.au>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>


# 8cbce376 12-Nov-2013 Frantisek Hrbata <fhrbata@redhat.com>

gcov: move gcov structs definitions to a gcc version specific file

Since also the gcov structures(gcov_info, gcov_fn_info, gcov_ctr_info) can
change between gcc releases, as shown in gcc 4.7, they cannot be defined
in a common header and need to be moved to a specific gcc implemention
file. This also requires to make the gcov_info structure opaque for the
common code and to introduce simple helpers for accessing data inside
gcov_info.

Signed-off-by: Frantisek Hrbata <fhrbata@redhat.com>
Cc: Jan Stancek <jstancek@redhat.com>
Cc: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
Acked-by: Peter Oberparleiter <peter.oberparleiter@de.ibm.com>
Cc: Rusty Russell <rusty@rustcorp.com.au>
Cc: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>
Cc: Andy Gospodarek <agospoda@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>


# 6072ddc8 12-Sep-2013 Jingoo Han <jg1.han@samsung.com>

kernel: replace strict_strto*() with kstrto*()

The usage of strict_strto*() is not preferred, because strict_strto*() is
obsolete. Thus, kstrto*() should be used.

Signed-off-by: Jingoo Han <jg1.han@samsung.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>


# 6038f373 15-Aug-2010 Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>

llseek: automatically add .llseek fop

All file_operations should get a .llseek operation so we can make
nonseekable_open the default for future file operations without a
.llseek pointer.

The three cases that we can automatically detect are no_llseek, seq_lseek
and default_llseek. For cases where we can we can automatically prove that
the file offset is always ignored, we use noop_llseek, which maintains
the current behavior of not returning an error from a seek.

New drivers should normally not use noop_llseek but instead use no_llseek
and call nonseekable_open at open time. Existing drivers can be converted
to do the same when the maintainer knows for certain that no user code
relies on calling seek on the device file.

The generated code is often incorrectly indented and right now contains
comments that clarify for each added line why a specific variant was
chosen. In the version that gets submitted upstream, the comments will
be gone and I will manually fix the indentation, because there does not
seem to be a way to do that using coccinelle.

Some amount of new code is currently sitting in linux-next that should get
the same modifications, which I will do at the end of the merge window.

Many thanks to Julia Lawall for helping me learn to write a semantic
patch that does all this.

===== begin semantic patch =====
// This adds an llseek= method to all file operations,
// as a preparation for making no_llseek the default.
//
// The rules are
// - use no_llseek explicitly if we do nonseekable_open
// - use seq_lseek for sequential files
// - use default_llseek if we know we access f_pos
// - use noop_llseek if we know we don't access f_pos,
// but we still want to allow users to call lseek
//
@ open1 exists @
identifier nested_open;
@@
nested_open(...)
{
<+...
nonseekable_open(...)
...+>
}

@ open exists@
identifier open_f;
identifier i, f;
identifier open1.nested_open;
@@
int open_f(struct inode *i, struct file *f)
{
<+...
(
nonseekable_open(...)
|
nested_open(...)
)
...+>
}

@ read disable optional_qualifier exists @
identifier read_f;
identifier f, p, s, off;
type ssize_t, size_t, loff_t;
expression E;
identifier func;
@@
ssize_t read_f(struct file *f, char *p, size_t s, loff_t *off)
{
<+...
(
*off = E
|
*off += E
|
func(..., off, ...)
|
E = *off
)
...+>
}

@ read_no_fpos disable optional_qualifier exists @
identifier read_f;
identifier f, p, s, off;
type ssize_t, size_t, loff_t;
@@
ssize_t read_f(struct file *f, char *p, size_t s, loff_t *off)
{
... when != off
}

@ write @
identifier write_f;
identifier f, p, s, off;
type ssize_t, size_t, loff_t;
expression E;
identifier func;
@@
ssize_t write_f(struct file *f, const char *p, size_t s, loff_t *off)
{
<+...
(
*off = E
|
*off += E
|
func(..., off, ...)
|
E = *off
)
...+>
}

@ write_no_fpos @
identifier write_f;
identifier f, p, s, off;
type ssize_t, size_t, loff_t;
@@
ssize_t write_f(struct file *f, const char *p, size_t s, loff_t *off)
{
... when != off
}

@ fops0 @
identifier fops;
@@
struct file_operations fops = {
...
};

@ has_llseek depends on fops0 @
identifier fops0.fops;
identifier llseek_f;
@@
struct file_operations fops = {
...
.llseek = llseek_f,
...
};

@ has_read depends on fops0 @
identifier fops0.fops;
identifier read_f;
@@
struct file_operations fops = {
...
.read = read_f,
...
};

@ has_write depends on fops0 @
identifier fops0.fops;
identifier write_f;
@@
struct file_operations fops = {
...
.write = write_f,
...
};

@ has_open depends on fops0 @
identifier fops0.fops;
identifier open_f;
@@
struct file_operations fops = {
...
.open = open_f,
...
};

// use no_llseek if we call nonseekable_open
////////////////////////////////////////////
@ nonseekable1 depends on !has_llseek && has_open @
identifier fops0.fops;
identifier nso ~= "nonseekable_open";
@@
struct file_operations fops = {
... .open = nso, ...
+.llseek = no_llseek, /* nonseekable */
};

@ nonseekable2 depends on !has_llseek @
identifier fops0.fops;
identifier open.open_f;
@@
struct file_operations fops = {
... .open = open_f, ...
+.llseek = no_llseek, /* open uses nonseekable */
};

// use seq_lseek for sequential files
/////////////////////////////////////
@ seq depends on !has_llseek @
identifier fops0.fops;
identifier sr ~= "seq_read";
@@
struct file_operations fops = {
... .read = sr, ...
+.llseek = seq_lseek, /* we have seq_read */
};

// use default_llseek if there is a readdir
///////////////////////////////////////////
@ fops1 depends on !has_llseek && !nonseekable1 && !nonseekable2 && !seq @
identifier fops0.fops;
identifier readdir_e;
@@
// any other fop is used that changes pos
struct file_operations fops = {
... .readdir = readdir_e, ...
+.llseek = default_llseek, /* readdir is present */
};

// use default_llseek if at least one of read/write touches f_pos
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
@ fops2 depends on !fops1 && !has_llseek && !nonseekable1 && !nonseekable2 && !seq @
identifier fops0.fops;
identifier read.read_f;
@@
// read fops use offset
struct file_operations fops = {
... .read = read_f, ...
+.llseek = default_llseek, /* read accesses f_pos */
};

@ fops3 depends on !fops1 && !fops2 && !has_llseek && !nonseekable1 && !nonseekable2 && !seq @
identifier fops0.fops;
identifier write.write_f;
@@
// write fops use offset
struct file_operations fops = {
... .write = write_f, ...
+ .llseek = default_llseek, /* write accesses f_pos */
};

// Use noop_llseek if neither read nor write accesses f_pos
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

@ fops4 depends on !fops1 && !fops2 && !fops3 && !has_llseek && !nonseekable1 && !nonseekable2 && !seq @
identifier fops0.fops;
identifier read_no_fpos.read_f;
identifier write_no_fpos.write_f;
@@
// write fops use offset
struct file_operations fops = {
...
.write = write_f,
.read = read_f,
...
+.llseek = noop_llseek, /* read and write both use no f_pos */
};

@ depends on has_write && !has_read && !fops1 && !fops2 && !has_llseek && !nonseekable1 && !nonseekable2 && !seq @
identifier fops0.fops;
identifier write_no_fpos.write_f;
@@
struct file_operations fops = {
... .write = write_f, ...
+.llseek = noop_llseek, /* write uses no f_pos */
};

@ depends on has_read && !has_write && !fops1 && !fops2 && !has_llseek && !nonseekable1 && !nonseekable2 && !seq @
identifier fops0.fops;
identifier read_no_fpos.read_f;
@@
struct file_operations fops = {
... .read = read_f, ...
+.llseek = noop_llseek, /* read uses no f_pos */
};

@ depends on !has_read && !has_write && !fops1 && !fops2 && !has_llseek && !nonseekable1 && !nonseekable2 && !seq @
identifier fops0.fops;
@@
struct file_operations fops = {
...
+.llseek = noop_llseek, /* no read or write fn */
};
===== End semantic patch =====

Signed-off-by: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>
Cc: Julia Lawall <julia@diku.dk>
Cc: Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org>


# 85a0fdfd 09-Sep-2010 Peter Oberparleiter <oberpar@linux.vnet.ibm.com>

gcov: fix null-pointer dereference for certain module types

The gcov-kernel infrastructure expects that each object file is loaded
only once. This may not be true, e.g. when loading multiple kernel
modules which are linked to the same object file. As a result, loading
such kernel modules will result in incorrect gcov results while unloading
will cause a null-pointer dereference.

This patch fixes these problems by changing the gcov-kernel infrastructure
so that multiple profiling data sets can be associated with one debugfs
entry. It applies to 2.6.36-rc1.

Signed-off-by: Peter Oberparleiter <oberpar@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Reported-by: Werner Spies <werner.spies@thalesgroup.com>
Cc: <stable@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>


# 2521f2c2 17-Jun-2009 Peter Oberparleiter <oberpar@linux.vnet.ibm.com>

gcov: add gcov profiling infrastructure

Enable the use of GCC's coverage testing tool gcov [1] with the Linux
kernel. gcov may be useful for:

* debugging (has this code been reached at all?)
* test improvement (how do I change my test to cover these lines?)
* minimizing kernel configurations (do I need this option if the
associated code is never run?)

The profiling patch incorporates the following changes:

* change kbuild to include profiling flags
* provide functions needed by profiling code
* present profiling data as files in debugfs

Note that on some architectures, enabling gcc's profiling option
"-fprofile-arcs" for the entire kernel may trigger compile/link/
run-time problems, some of which are caused by toolchain bugs and
others which require adjustment of architecture code.

For this reason profiling the entire kernel is initially restricted
to those architectures for which it is known to work without changes.
This restriction can be lifted once an architecture has been tested
and found compatible with gcc's profiling. Profiling of single files
or directories is still available on all platforms (see config help
text).

[1] http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Gcov.html

Signed-off-by: Peter Oberparleiter <oberpar@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Cc: Andi Kleen <andi@firstfloor.org>
Cc: Huang Ying <ying.huang@intel.com>
Cc: Li Wei <W.Li@Sun.COM>
Cc: Michael Ellerman <michaele@au1.ibm.com>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Cc: Heiko Carstens <heicars2@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Cc: Martin Schwidefsky <mschwid2@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Cc: Rusty Russell <rusty@rustcorp.com.au>
Cc: WANG Cong <xiyou.wangcong@gmail.com>
Cc: Sam Ravnborg <sam@ravnborg.org>
Cc: Jeff Dike <jdike@addtoit.com>
Cc: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>