To: perfctr-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: perfctr-2.6.0-pre2 released Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Version 2.6.0-pre2 of perfctr, the Linux/x86 performance monitoring counters driver, is now available at the usual place: http://www.csd.uu.se/~mikpe/linux/perfctr/ Although this release makes the mmap()ed counter state compatible between x86 and x86-64, there are still several unresolved ABI compatibility problems (not just x86 on x86-64 but also protection for future drivers versions). I have the choice of either doing ad-hoc solutions for each data relevant structure (info, counter sums, counter control), or go with a generic sparse marshalling approach. The latter has been prototyped and _will_ work, but it's a radical departure from conventional kernel/user-space APIs. Version 2.6.0-pre2, 2003-07-13 - Per-process perfctrs API fixes: control data is retrieved using new READ_CONTROL operation, mmap()ed state no longer exposes the control data, the SAMPLE operation is renamed to READ_SUM and now updates a given user-space buffer, non-write operations are permitted on dead perfctrs. Retrieving control explicitly makes the user-visible mmap()ed state binary compatible between x86 and x86-64. The other changes simplify the user-space library and allow perfex to replace raw mmap() accesses with higher-level operations. - Driver cleanups, including eliminating many #ifdefs and removing some unnecessary P4-specific driver procedures. - Fixes for macro redefinition warnings in the 2.4.22-pre3 kernel. - Perfctr library RPM spec file updates from Bryan O'Sullivan. / Mikael Pettersson