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When running the likely/unlikely profiler, one of the results did not look accurate. It noted that the unlikely() in link_path_walk() was 100% incorrect. When I added a trace_printk() to see what was happening there, it became 80% correct! Looking deeper into what whas happening, I found that gcc split that if statement into two paths. One where the if statement became a constant, the other path a variable. The other path had the if statement always hit (making the unlikely there, always false), but since the #define unlikely() has: #define unlikely() (__builtin_constant_p(x) ? !!(x) : __branch_check__(x, 0)) Where constants are ignored by the branch profiler, the "constant" path made by the compiler was ignored, even though it was hit 80% of the time. By just passing the constant value to the __branch_check__() function and tracing it out of line (as always correct, as likely/unlikely isn't a factor for constants), then we get back the accurate readings of branches that were optimized by gcc causing part of the execution to become constant. Signed-off-by: Steven Rostedt (VMware) <rostedt@goodmis.org>
Linux kernel ============ This file was moved to Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst Please notice that there are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or ``make pdfdocs``. There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory, several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation. See Documentation/00-INDEX for a list of what is contained in each file. Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.