perf report/top: Add option to collapse undesired parts of call graph

For example, in an application with an expensive function implemented
with deeply nested recursive calls, the default call-graph presentation
is dominated by the different callchains within that function.  By
ignoring these callees, we can collect the callchains leading into the
function and compactly identify what to blame for expensive calls.

For example, in this report the callers of garbage_collect() are
scattered across the tree:

  $ perf report -d ruby 2>- | grep -m10 ^[^#]*[a-z]
      22.03%     ruby  [.] gc_mark
                 --- gc_mark
                    |--59.40%-- mark_keyvalue
                    |          st_foreach
                    |          gc_mark_children
                    |          |--99.75%-- rb_gc_mark
                    |          |          rb_vm_mark
                    |          |          gc_mark_children
                    |          |          gc_marks
                    |          |          |--99.00%-- garbage_collect

If we ignore the callees of garbage_collect(), its callers are coalesced:

  $ perf report --ignore-callees garbage_collect -d ruby 2>- | grep -m10 ^[^#]*[a-z]
      72.92%     ruby  [.] garbage_collect
                 --- garbage_collect
                     vm_xmalloc
                    |--47.08%-- ruby_xmalloc
                    |          st_insert2
                    |          rb_hash_aset
                    |          |--98.45%-- features_index_add
                    |          |          rb_provide_feature
                    |          |          rb_require_safe
                    |          |          vm_call_method

Signed-off-by: Greg Price <price@mit.edu>
Tested-by: Jiri Olsa <jolsa@redhat.com>
Cc: David Ahern <dsahern@gmail.com>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>
Cc: Jiri Olsa <jolsa@redhat.com>
Cc: Namhyung Kim <namhyung@kernel.org>
Cc: Paul Mackerras <paulus@samba.org>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl>
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20130623031720.GW22203@biohazard-cafe.mit.edu
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20130708115746.GO22203@biohazard-cafe.mit.edu
Cc: Fengguang Wu <fengguang.wu@intel.com>
[ remove spaces at beginning of line, reported by Fengguang Wu ]
Signed-off-by: Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo <acme@redhat.com>

1 files changed, 5 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/tools/perf/Documentation/perf-top.txt b/tools/perf/Documentation/perf-top.txt
index 7fdd1909e376..58d6598a9686 100644
--- a/tools/perf/Documentation/perf-top.txt
+++ b/tools/perf/Documentation/perf-top.txt
@@ -155,6 +155,11 @@ Default is to monitor all CPUS.
 
 	Default: fractal,0.5,callee.
 
+--ignore-callees=<regex>::
+        Ignore callees of the function(s) matching the given regex.
+        This has the effect of collecting the callers of each such
+        function into one place in the call-graph tree.
+
 --percent-limit::
 	Do not show entries which have an overhead under that percent.
 	(Default: 0).