Symbolization of addresses is a commonly encountered problem, maybe most so in
the context of BPF and tracing with the capturing of stack traces. Perhaps
superficially straightforward-looking, there a variety of considerations and
intricacies, such as:
- different formats/standards (e.g., ELF symbol information, DWARF, GSYM) cater
to different use cases and require vastly different steps to work with
- on top of that, even if a library such as libelf or libdwarf is relied on,
plenty of format specific details need to be known to symbolize addresses
properly
- discovery of symbolization sources (e.g., DWARF debug files)
- symbolization trade-offs (performance, memory usage)
- system-specific details and corner cases
We are working on blazesym [0], a library that aims to provide users with a
batteries-included experience for symbolizing addresses (but also the reverse:
mapping symbols to addresses).
We would like to provide a brief overview of the library and its goals and then
open up for discussion. Some topics we are specifically interested in
understanding better:
- What are current issues with symbolization that would be great to support?
- Does the usage of Rust pose a problem in your context? (C bindings are
available, but a Rust toolchain is required for building; are pre-built
binaries and packages for common distributions sufficient for your use cases?)
In general, we'd be interested in hearing your use cases and in discussing
whether blazesym is a fit or could be made to work.
Thanks,
Daniel
[0] https://github.com/libbpf/blazesym
