On Wed, Apr 22, 2020 at 4:19 AM Toke Høiland-Jørgensen <toke@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Andrii Nakryiko <andriin@xxxxxx> writes:
>
> > As discussed at LPC 2019 ([0]), this patch brings (a quite belated) support
> > for declarative BTF-defined map-in-map support in libbpf. It allows to define
> > ARRAY_OF_MAPS and HASH_OF_MAPS BPF maps without any user-space initialization
> > code involved.
> >
> > Additionally, it allows to initialize outer map's slots with references to
> > respective inner maps at load time, also completely declaratively.
> >
> > Despite a weak type system of C, the way BTF-defined map-in-map definition
> > works, it's actually quite hard to accidentally initialize outer map with
> > incompatible inner maps. This being C, of course, it's still possible, but
> > even that would be caught at load time and error returned with helpful debug
> > log pointing exactly to the slot that failed to be initialized.
> >
> > Here's the relevant part of libbpf debug log showing pretty clearly of what's
> > going on with map-in-map initialization:
> >
> > libbpf: .maps relo #0: for 6 value 0 rel.r_offset 96 name 260 ('inner_map1')
> > libbpf: .maps relo #0: map 'outer_arr' slot [0] points to map 'inner_map1'
> > libbpf: .maps relo #1: for 7 value 32 rel.r_offset 112 name 249 ('inner_map2')
> > libbpf: .maps relo #1: map 'outer_arr' slot [2] points to map 'inner_map2'
> > libbpf: .maps relo #2: for 7 value 32 rel.r_offset 144 name 249 ('inner_map2')
> > libbpf: .maps relo #2: map 'outer_hash' slot [0] points to map 'inner_map2'
> > libbpf: .maps relo #3: for 6 value 0 rel.r_offset 176 name 260 ('inner_map1')
> > libbpf: .maps relo #3: map 'outer_hash' slot [4] points to map 'inner_map1'
> > libbpf: map 'inner_map1': created successfully, fd=4
> > libbpf: map 'inner_map2': created successfully, fd=5
> > libbpf: map 'outer_arr': created successfully, fd=7
> > libbpf: map 'outer_arr': slot [0] set to map 'inner_map1' fd=4
> > libbpf: map 'outer_arr': slot [2] set to map 'inner_map2' fd=5
> > libbpf: map 'outer_hash': created successfully, fd=8
> > libbpf: map 'outer_hash': slot [0] set to map 'inner_map2' fd=5
> > libbpf: map 'outer_hash': slot [4] set to map 'inner_map1' fd=4
> >
> > See also included selftest with some extra comments explaining extra details
> > of usage.
>
> Could you please put an example of usage in the commit message as well?
> Easier to find that way, especially if the selftests are not handy (such
> as in the libbpf github repo).
Yes, good point. I will add it in v2 after I get some initial feedback on v1.
>
> -Toke
>
