Direct, unsafe Rust bindings for Linux's perf_event_open system call
This crate exports unsafe Rust wrappers for Linux system calls for accessing
performance monitoring counters and tracing facilities. This includes:
- the processor's own performance monitoring registers
- kernel counters for things like context switches and page faults
- kernel tracepoints, kprobe, and uprobes
- processor tracing facilities like Intel's Branch Trace Store (BTS)
- hardware breakpoints
This crate provides:
- a Rust wrapper the Linux
perf_event_opensystem call - Rust wrappers for the ioctls you can apply to a file descriptor returned by
perf_event_open - bindings for
perf_event_open's associated header files, automatically generated bybindgen
All functions are direct, unsafe wrappers for the underlying calls. They
operate on raw pointers and raw file descriptors.
For a type-safe API for basic functionality, see the perf-event crate.
Updating the System Call Bindings
The bindings module defines Rust equivalents for the types and constants used
by the Linux perf_event_open system call and its related ioctls. These are
generated automatically using bindgen from the kernel's C header files. Both
the interface and the underlying functionality are quite complex, and new
features are added at a steady pace. As explained in the module documentation,
regenerating the bindings as needed should not break downstream crates if they
are written properly.
To update the generated bindings, run the regenerate.sh script, found in the
same directory as this README.md file. This runs bindgen and splices its
output in the bindings module's source code, preserving the documentation.
Please also fix the comments in src/lib.rs explaining exactly which version of
the kernel headers you generated the bindings from.