Status of systemtap in Debian

[Lucas Nussbaum <lucas@lucas-nussbaum.net>]

[ M-F-T set to debian-devel@ ]

Hi,

Systemtap[1] is a tool allowing to dynamically insert probes in the
Linux kernel, similarly to what is possible with DTrace on Solaris.
[1] http://sourceware.org/systemtap/

The state of systemtap in Debian is currently worrying. First, the
package has been orphaned (#568866). I'm willing to take over
maintenance, but there's another, bigger problem: the Debian kernels
don't provide debuginfo, so they are unsuitable for use with systemtap.
Users are required to build a custom kernel.
This has been discussed at length in #365349, and the blockers are:

- disk space on buildds: at least 2 GiB are required to build a kernel
  with debuginfo. (that doesn't sound too hard to satisfy)

- mirror space: each debug .deb would use ~ 450 MB (see
  http://ddebs.ubuntu.com/pool/main/l/linux/)

Debian is currently the only major distro where users are required to
build their own kernel to use systemtap, so I think that we should try
to support it, at least for some kernel flavors and some
architectures.

Kernel, buildd and mirror people, what do you think?

Thanks,
-- 
| Lucas Nussbaum
| lucas@lucas-nussbaum.net   http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/ |
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