Open Source Summit + Embedded Linux Conference Europe 2020

BPF and the overall tracing infrastructure in the kernel has improved tremendously and provides a powerful framework for tracing tools. DTrace is a well known and versatile tracing tool that is being re-implemented to make use of BPF and kernel tracing facilities. The goal of this open source project (hosted on github) is to provide a full-featured implementation of DTrace, leveraging the power of BPF to provide well known functionality

The presentation will provide an update on the progress of the re-implementation project of DTrace. Kris will share some of the lessons learnt along the way, highlighting how BPF provides the building blocks to implement a complex tracing tool. He will provide examples of creative techniques that showcase the power of BPF as an execution engine.

Like any project, the re-implementation of DTrace has not been without some pitfalls, and Kris will highlight some of the limitations and unsolved problems the development team has encountered.