Messages in this thread | | | From | Linus Torvalds <> | Date | Thu, 19 Apr 2012 17:31:04 -0700 | Subject | Re: [GIT PULL 00/13] Annotation improvements (G+ edition) |
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On Thu, Apr 19, 2012 at 1:33 PM, Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo <acme@infradead.org> wrote: > > Annotate improvements > > Now the default annotate browser uses a much more compact format, implementing > suggestions made made by several people, notably Linus. > > Here is part of the new __list_del_entry annotation:
Ok, so I did a quick test-run, and things are definitely more readable.
However, from a "where is the loop" angle, the one thing that is actually fairly hard to visually see is the branches.
Sure, you can find them, but they are not nearly as easy to pick out visually as the branch targets are, and I do wonder if it wouldn't make sense to try to make them stand out a bit more.
What is visually important is (a) seeing that it's a branch (b) seeing the direction of the branch (to pick up on loops more easily).
I suspect that doing a whole arrow is just going to be a horrible criss-crossing mess (although with some graphical UI it might not be as bad as with the textual one), but I think even just doing it in entirely local scope of the particular line that contains the branch would be perfectly fine.
This, for example, is a snippet of a pretty simple function (avc_lookup()) with a few branches and a few branch targets:
2.08 │ test %rdx,%rdx 0.00 │ jne 38 0.00 │ jmp 53 5.13 │ 30: mov (%rdx),%rdx 0.74 │ test %rdx,%rdx 0.00 │ je 53 0.06 │ 38: lea -0x20(%rdx),%rax 59.64 │ cmp -0x20(%rdx),%edi 0.40 │ jne 30 17.36 │ cmp -0x18(%rdx),%cx 0.00 │ jne 30 1.91 │ cmp 0x4(%rax),%esi 0.00 │ jne 30 0.22 │ test %rax,%rax 0.20 │ je 53 1.68 │ leaveq 1.90 │ retq 0.00 │ 53: incl %gs:0xe214 0.00 │ xor %eax,%eax
and the branch targets are fairly easy to pick up, but seeing the branches - and their directions - themselves takes much more parsing. Ok, it's actually pretty simple above, because they have a faily obvious pattern, but in bigger functions they really are harder to pick out.
Now, what if the branch instruction was just followed with a simple "arrow up/down" thing, and to make the distinction really simple to see visually, make the indentation slightly different for the back/forwards case, so that you don't have to really look at the (crappy) arrow head to find possible loops (backwards jumps).
The above snippet would then become:
2.08 test %rdx,%rdx 0.00 jne 38 ----v 0.00 jmp 53 ----v 5.13 30: mov (%rdx),%rdx 0.74 test %rdx,%rdx 0.00 je 53 ----v 0.06 38: lea -0x20(%rdx),%rax 59.64 cmp -0x20(%rdx),%edi 0.40 jne 30 ----^ 17.36 cmp -0x18(%rdx),%cx 0.00 jne 30 ----^ 1.91 cmp 0x4(%rax),%esi 0.00 jne 30 ----^ 0.22 test %rax,%rax 0.20 je 53 ----v 1.68 leaveq 1.90 retq 0.00 53: incl %gs:0xe214 0.00 xor %eax,%eax
where I think it's fairly easy to pick up the branches. Sure, once you really need to connect them, you do need to compare the offsets (easy in the above case, less obvious with big complex functions), but just making it easy to *see* the backwards branches makes it easier to see the loop, methinks.
I dunno. Just a suggestion. I definitely like the new format better already, regardless of any arrows.
Linus -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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