1) perf build ============= The perf build process consists of several separated building blocks, which are linked together to form the perf binary: - libperf library (static) - perf builtin commands - traceevent library (static) - GTK ui library Several makefiles govern the perf build: - Makefile top level Makefile working as a wrapper that calls the main Makefile.perf with a -j option to do parallel builds. - Makefile.perf main makefile that triggers build of all perf objects including installation and documentation processing. - tools/build/Makefile.build main makefile of the build framework - tools/build/Build.include build framework generic definitions - Build makefiles makefiles that defines build objects Please refer to tools/build/Documentation/Build.txt for more information about build framework. 2) perf build ============= The Makefile.perf triggers the build framework for build objects: perf, libperf, gtk resulting in following objects: $ ls *-in.o gtk-in.o libperf-in.o perf-in.o Those objects are then used in final linking: libperf-gtk.so <- gtk-in.o libperf-in.o perf <- perf-in.o libperf-in.o NOTE this description is omitting other libraries involved, only focusing on build framework outcomes 3) Build with ASan or UBSan ========================== $ cd tools/perf $ make DESTDIR=/usr $ make DESTDIR=/usr install AddressSanitizer (or ASan) is a GCC feature that detects memory corruption bugs such as buffer overflows and memory leaks. $ cd tools/perf $ make DEBUG=1 EXTRA_CFLAGS='-fno-omit-frame-pointer -fsanitize=address' $ ASAN_OPTIONS=log_path=asan.log ./perf record -a ASan outputs all detected issues into a log file named 'asan.log.'. UndefinedBehaviorSanitizer (or UBSan) is a fast undefined behavior detector supported by GCC. UBSan detects undefined behaviors of programs at runtime. $ cd tools/perf $ make DEBUG=1 EXTRA_CFLAGS='-fno-omit-frame-pointer -fsanitize=undefined' $ UBSAN_OPTIONS=print_stacktrace=1 ./perf record -a If UBSan detects any problem at runtime, it outputs a “runtime error:” message. 4) Cross compilation ==================== As Multiarch is commonly supported in Linux distributions, we can install libraries for multiple architectures on the same system and then cross-compile Linux perf. For example, Aarch64 libraries and toolchains can be installed on an x86_64 machine, allowing us to compile perf for an Aarch64 target. Below is the command for building the perf with dynamic linking. $ cd /path/to/Linux $ make ARCH=arm64 CROSS_COMPILE=aarch64-linux-gnu- -C tools/perf For static linking, the option `LDFLAGS="-static"` is required. $ make ARCH=arm64 CROSS_COMPILE=aarch64-linux-gnu- \ LDFLAGS="-static" -C tools/perf In the embedded system world, a use case is to explicitly specify the package configuration paths for cross building: $ PKG_CONFIG_SYSROOT_DIR="/path/to/cross/build/sysroot" \ PKG_CONFIG_LIBDIR="/usr/lib/:/usr/local/lib" \ make ARCH=arm64 CROSS_COMPILE=aarch64-linux-gnu- -C tools/perf In this case, the variable PKG_CONFIG_SYSROOT_DIR can be used alongside the variable PKG_CONFIG_LIBDIR or PKG_CONFIG_PATH to prepend the sysroot path to the library paths for cross compilation.