Libside: Tracer-Agnostic Instrumentation API for User-Space Applications

Explore a new API/ABI called libside in this 18-minute conference talk from the Linux Plumbers Conference. Learn how libside allows kernel tracers and various user-space tracers to attach to static and dynamic instrumentation of user-space applications. Discover the library's type system and set of macros that help applications declare and insert instrumentation calls. Understand how libside exposes APIs to kernel and user-space tracers for listing and connecting to instrumentation, and how it conditionally enables instrumentation when at least one tracer is using it. Gain insights into the relevance of this topic in the context of User Events, which was recently merged into the Linux kernel. Delve into the details of this tracer-agnostic instrumentation API presented by Mathieu Desnoy, and explore its potential impact on kernel and user-space tracing capabilities.