Files
linux/tools/include/uapi
Paolo Bonzini e74c3a8891 Merge tag 'kvmarm-7.1' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/kvmarm/kvmarm into HEAD
KVM/arm64 updates for 7.1

* New features:

- Add support for tracing in the standalone EL2 hypervisor code,
  which should help both debugging and performance analysis.
  This comes with a full infrastructure for 'remote' trace buffers
  that can be exposed by non-kernel entities such as firmware.

- Add support for GICv5 Per Processor Interrupts (PPIs), as the
  starting point for supporting the new GIC architecture in KVM.

- Finally add support for pKVM protected guests, with anonymous
  memory being used as a backing store. About time!

* Improvements and bug fixes:

- Rework the dreaded user_mem_abort() function to make it more
  maintainable, reducing the amount of state being exposed to
  the various helpers and rendering a substantial amount of
  state immutable.

- Expand the Stage-2 page table dumper to support NV shadow
  page tables on a per-VM basis.

- Tidy up the pKVM PSCI proxy code to be slightly less hard
  to follow.

- Fix both SPE and TRBE in non-VHE configurations so that they
  do not generate spurious, out of context table walks that
  ultimately lead to very bad HW lockups.

- A small set of patches fixing the Stage-2 MMU freeing in error
  cases.

- Tighten-up accepted SMC immediate value to be only #0 for host
  SMCCC calls.

- The usual cleanups and other selftest churn.
2026-04-13 11:49:54 +02:00
..

Why we want a copy of kernel headers in tools?
==============================================

There used to be no copies, with tools/ code using kernel headers
directly. From time to time tools/perf/ broke due to legitimate kernel
hacking. At some point Linus complained about such direct usage. Then we
adopted the current model.

The way these headers are used in perf are not restricted to just
including them to compile something.

There are sometimes used in scripts that convert defines into string
tables, etc, so some change may break one of these scripts, or new MSRs
may use some different #define pattern, etc.

E.g.:

  $ ls -1 tools/perf/trace/beauty/*.sh | head -5
  tools/perf/trace/beauty/arch_errno_names.sh
  tools/perf/trace/beauty/drm_ioctl.sh
  tools/perf/trace/beauty/fadvise.sh
  tools/perf/trace/beauty/fsconfig.sh
  tools/perf/trace/beauty/fsmount.sh
  $
  $ tools/perf/trace/beauty/fadvise.sh
  static const char *fadvise_advices[] = {
        [0] = "NORMAL",
        [1] = "RANDOM",
        [2] = "SEQUENTIAL",
        [3] = "WILLNEED",
        [4] = "DONTNEED",
        [5] = "NOREUSE",
  };
  $

The tools/perf/check-headers.sh script, part of the tools/ build
process, points out changes in the original files.

So its important not to touch the copies in tools/ when doing changes in
the original kernel headers, that will be done later, when
check-headers.sh inform about the change to the perf tools hackers.

Another explanation from Ingo Molnar:
It's better than all the alternatives we tried so far:

 - Symbolic links and direct #includes: this was the original approach but
   was pushed back on from the kernel side, when tooling modified the
   headers and broke them accidentally for kernel builds.

 - Duplicate self-defined ABI headers like glibc: double the maintenance
   burden, double the chance for mistakes, plus there's no tech-driven
   notification mechanism to look at new kernel side changes.

What we are doing now is a third option:

 - A software-enforced copy-on-write mechanism of kernel headers to
   tooling, driven by non-fatal warnings on the tooling side build when
   kernel headers get modified:

    Warning: Kernel ABI header differences:
      diff -u tools/include/uapi/drm/i915_drm.h include/uapi/drm/i915_drm.h
      diff -u tools/include/uapi/linux/fs.h include/uapi/linux/fs.h
      diff -u tools/include/uapi/linux/kvm.h include/uapi/linux/kvm.h
      ...

   The tooling policy is to always pick up the kernel side headers as-is,
   and integate them into the tooling build. The warnings above serve as a
   notification to tooling maintainers that there's changes on the kernel
   side.

We've been using this for many years now, and it might seem hacky, but
works surprisingly well.