usdt

Dust your Rust with USDT probes.

Overview

usdt exposes statically-defined DTrace probes to Rust code. Users write a provider definition as usual, in a D language script. The provider's probes may then be compiled into Rust code that fires the probes.

There are two mechanisms for converting the D probe definitions into Rust: a build.rs script and a procedural macro. The generated code is interchangeable, so it's simply the preference of the consuming developer that dictates which method is used. The build-time and macro versions are shown in the example crates probe-test-build and probe-test-macro, respectively.

Note: This crate uses inline assembly to work its magic. As such a nightly Rust toolchain is required, and the functionality is hidden behind the "asm" feature flag. A nightly toolchain can be installed with rustup toolchain install nightly.

Example

The probe-test-build binary crate in this package implements a complete example, using the build-time code generation.

The starting point is a D script, called "test.d". It looks like:

provider test {
	probe start(uint8_t);
	probe stop(char*, uint8_t);
};

This script defines a single provider, test, with two probes, start and stop, with a different set of arguments. (Numeric primitive types and &strs are currently supported.)

This provider definition must be converted into Rust code, which can be done in a simple build script:

use usdt::Builder;

fn main() {
	Builder::new("test.d").build().unwrap();
}

This generates a file in the directory OUT_DIR which contains the generated Rust macros that fire the probes. Unless it is changed, this file is named the same as the provider definition file, so test.rs in this case.

Using the probes in Rust code looks like the following, which is in probe-test-build/src/main.rs.

//! An example using the `usdt` crate, generating the probes via a build script.
#![feature(asm)]

use std::thread::sleep;
use std::time::Duration;

use usdt::register_probes;

// Include the Rust implementation generated by the build script.
include!(concat!(env!("OUT_DIR"), "/test.rs"));

fn main() {
    let duration = Duration::from_secs(1);
    let mut counter: u8 = 0;

    // NOTE: One _must_ call this function in order to actually register the probes with DTrace.
    // Without this, it won't be possible to list, enable, or see the probes via `dtrace(1)`.
    register_probes().unwrap();

    loop {
        // Call the "start" probe which accepts a u8.
        test_start!(|| (counter));

        // Do some work.
        sleep(duration);

        // Call the "stop" probe, which accepts a &str and a u8.
        test_stop!(|| ("the probe has fired", counter));

        counter = counter.wrapping_add(1);
    }
}

Note that the #![feature(asm)] attribute is required. One can also see that the Rust code is included directly using the include! macro. The probe definitions are converted into Rust macros, named by the provider and probe. In our case, the first probe is converted into a macro test_start!.

IMPORTANT: It's important to note that the application must call usdt::register_probes() in order to actually register the probe points with DTrace. Failing to do this will not impact the application's functionality, but it will be impossible to list, enable, or otherwise see the probes with the dtrace(1) tool without this.

We can see that this is hooked up with DTrace by running the example and listing the expected probes by name.

$ cargo +nightly run --features asm

And in another terminal, list the matching probes with:

$ sudo dtrace -l -n test*:::
   ID   PROVIDER            MODULE                          FUNCTION NAME
 2865  test14314  probe-test-build _ZN16probe_test_build4main17h906db832bb52ab01E [probe_test_build::main::h906db832bb52ab01] start
 2866  test14314  probe-test-build _ZN16probe_test_build4main17h906db832bb52ab01E [probe_test_build::main::h906db832bb52ab01] stop

Probe arguments

One can see that the probe macros are called with closures, rather than with the probe arguments directly. This has two purposes.

First, it indicates that the probe arguments may not be evaluated. DTrace generates "is-enabled" probes for defined probe, which is a simple way to check if the probe has currently been enabled. The arguments are only unpacked if the probe is enabled, and so users must not rely on side-effects. The closure helps indicate this.

The second point of this is efficiency. Again, the arguments are not evaluated if the probe is not enabled. The closure is only evaluated internally after the probe is verified to be enabled, which avoid the unnecessary work of argument marshalling if the probe is disabled.

Procedural macro version

The procedural macro version of this crate can be seen in the probe-test-macro example, which is nearly identical to the above example. However, there is no build.rs script, so in place of the include! macro, one finds the procedural macro:

dtrace_provider!("test.d");

This macro generates the same macros as seen above, but does at the time the source itself is compiled. This may be easier for some use cases, as there is no build script. However, procedural macros have downsides. It can be difficult to understand their internals, especially when things fail. Additionally, the macro is run on every compile, even if the provider definition is unchanged. This may be negligible for small provider definitions, but users may see a noticeable increase in compile times when many probes are defined.

A note about registration

Note that the usdt::register_probes() function is called at the top of main in the above example. This method is required to actually register the probes with the DTrace kernel module. This presents a quandary for library developers who wish to instrument their code, as consumers of their library may forget to (or choose not to) call this function. There are potential workarounds to this problem (init-sections, other magic), but each comes with significant tradeoffs. As such the current recommendation is:

Library developers are encouraged to re-export the usdt::register_probes (or a function calling it), and document to their users that this function should be called to guarantee that probes are registered.