libbpf: Add BTF writing APIs

Add APIs for appending new BTF types at the end of BTF object.

Each BTF kind has either one API of the form btf__add_<kind>(). For types
that have variable amount of additional items (struct/union, enum, func_proto,
datasec), additional API is provided to emit each such item. E.g., for
emitting a struct, one would use the following sequence of API calls:

btf__add_struct(...);
btf__add_field(...);
...
btf__add_field(...);

Each btf__add_field() will ensure that the last BTF type is of STRUCT or
UNION kind and will automatically increment that type's vlen field.

All the strings are provided as C strings (const char *), not a string offset.
This significantly improves usability of BTF writer APIs. All such strings
will be automatically appended to string section or existing string will be
re-used, if such string was already added previously.

Each API attempts to do all the reasonable validations, like enforcing
non-empty names for entities with required names, proper value bounds, various
bit offset restrictions, etc.

Type ID validation is minimal because it's possible to emit a type that refers
to type that will be emitted later, so libbpf has no way to enforce such
cases. User must be careful to properly emit all the necessary types and
specify type IDs that will be valid in the finally generated BTF.

Each of btf__add_<kind>() APIs return new type ID on success or negative
value on error. APIs like btf__add_field() that emit additional items
return zero on success and negative value on error.

Signed-off-by: Andrii Nakryiko <andriin@fb.com>
Signed-off-by: Alexei Starovoitov <ast@kernel.org>
Acked-by: John Fastabend <john.fastabend@gmail.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/bpf/20200929020533.711288-2-andriin@fb.com
3 files changed
tree: c36d58a9d992eefc4045da337afe4c899affed59
  1. include/
  2. scripts/
  3. src/
  4. travis-ci/
  5. .lgtm.yml
  6. .travis.yml
  7. BPF-CHECKPOINT-COMMIT
  8. CHECKPOINT-COMMIT
  9. LICENSE
  10. LICENSE.BSD-2-Clause
  11. LICENSE.LPGL-2.1
  12. README.md
README.md

This is a mirror of bpf-next Linux source tree's tools/lib/bpf directory plus its supporting header files.

All the gory details of syncing can be found in scripts/sync-kernel.sh script.

Some header files in this repo (include/linux/*.h) are reduced versions of their counterpart files at bpf-next's tools/include/linux/*.h to make compilation successful.

BPF questions

All general BPF questions, including kernel functionality, libbpf APIs and their application, should be sent to bpf@vger.kernel.org mailing list. You can subscribe to it here and search its archive here. Please search the archive before asking new questions. It very well might be that this was already addressed or answered before.

bpf@vger.kernel.org is monitored by many more people and they will happily try to help you with whatever issue you have. This repository's PRs and issues should be opened only for dealing with issues pertaining to specific way this libbpf mirror repo is set up and organized.

Build Build Status Total alerts Coverity

libelf is an internal dependency of libbpf and thus it is required to link against and must be installed on the system for applications to work. pkg-config is used by default to find libelf, and the program called can be overridden with PKG_CONFIG.

If using pkg-config at build time is not desired, it can be disabled by setting NO_PKG_CONFIG=1 when calling make.

To build both static libbpf.a and shared libbpf.so:

$ cd src
$ make

To build only static libbpf.a library in directory build/ and install them together with libbpf headers in a staging directory root/:

$ cd src
$ mkdir build root
$ BUILD_STATIC_ONLY=y OBJDIR=build DESTDIR=root make install

To build both static libbpf.a and shared libbpf.so against a custom libelf dependency installed in /build/root/ and install them together with libbpf headers in a build directory /build/root/:

$ cd src
$ PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/build/root/lib64/pkgconfig DESTDIR=/build/root make install

Distributions

Distributions packaging libbpf from this mirror:

Benefits of packaging from the mirror over packaging from kernel sources:

  • Consistent versioning across distributions.
  • No ties to any specific kernel, transparent handling of older kernels. Libbpf is designed to be kernel-agnostic and work across multitude of kernel versions. It has built-in mechanisms to gracefully handle older kernels, that are missing some of the features, by working around or gracefully degrading functionality. Thus libbpf is not tied to a specific kernel version and can/should be packaged and versioned independently.
  • Continuous integration testing via TravisCI.
  • Static code analysis via LGTM and Coverity.

Package dependencies of libbpf, package names may vary across distros:

  • zlib
  • libelf

BPF CO-RE (Compile Once – Run Everywhere)

Libbpf supports building BPF CO-RE-enabled applications, which, in contrast to BCC, do not require Clang/LLVM runtime being deployed to target servers and doesn't rely on kernel-devel headers being available.

It does rely on kernel to be built with BTF type information, though. Some major Linux distributions come with kernel BTF already built in:

  • Fedora 31+
  • RHEL 8.2+
  • OpenSUSE Tumbleweed (in the next release, as of 2020-06-04)
  • Arch Linux (from kernel 5.7.1.arch1-1)

If your kernel doesn‘t come with BTF built-in, you’ll need to build custom kernel. You'll need:

  • pahole 1.16+ tool (part of dwarves package), which performs DWARF to BTF conversion;
  • kernel built with CONFIG_DEBUG_INFO_BTF=y option;
  • you can check if your kernel has BTF built-in by looking for /sys/kernel/btf/vmlinux file:
$ ls -la /sys/kernel/btf/vmlinux
-r--r--r--. 1 root root 3541561 Jun  2 18:16 /sys/kernel/btf/vmlinux

To develop and build BPF programs, you'll need Clang/LLVM 10+. The following distributions have Clang/LLVM 10+ packaged by default:

  • Fedora 32+
  • Ubuntu 20.04+
  • Arch Linux

Otherwise, please make sure to update it on your system.

The following resources are useful to understand what BPF CO-RE is and how to use it:

License

This work is dual-licensed under BSD 2-clause license and GNU LGPL v2.1 license. You can choose between one of them if you use this work.

SPDX-License-Identifier: BSD-2-Clause OR LGPL-2.1