Re: [PATCH 0/2] CTF pickle enhancements

[Jose E. Marchesi]

Hi Indu.

> In the two patches, I have tried to make the ctf pickles more usable
> hopefully.
>
> For the ctf-print.pk, I saw that btf has a pickle named btf-dump.pk. After 
> much
> thought, I chose the string "print" over "dump" because "dump" has an already
> defined meaning which is distinct from printing in GNU Poke.

The -dump.pk pickles are for functions that aid in implementing
utilities like objdump.

We chose "dump" vs. "print" because otherwise they could be confused
with type pretty-printers.  In fact, I wouldn't expect for a dump
routine to use the #<...> printing convention, which is for pretty
printers.

Instead, in the case of btf-dump.pk, it imitates the output of pahole.
This is good, because BPF hackers will be already used to that format.

In the case of ctf-dump.pk, it could imitate the output of objdump
--ctf.

> When working on these pickles, I ran into few aspects that I could not work
> around. I am not a 100% on whether these are features by design (or my
> misunderstanding?); so I think it's best I start a different thread to discuss
> those. BTW, they are indicated in the ctf-print.pk pickle with XXX.

Yes, let's discuss them one by one.  In the meanwhile it is ok to have
XXX in the code.

Poke is so new that we are still figuring out useful idioms.  There are
also limitations and bugs.

Thanks!