perf record: Add option to avoid updating buildid cache

There are situations where there is enough information in the perf.data
to process the samples. Updating the buildid cache may add unecessary
overhead in terms of disk space and time (copying large elf images).

A persistent option to do this already exists via the perfconfig file,
simply do:

[buildid]
dir = /dev/null

This patch provides a way to suppress builid cache updates on a per-run
basis.  It addds a new option, -N, to perf record. Buildids are still
generated in the perf.data file.

Cc: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
Cc: Frédéric Weisbecker <fweisbec@gmail.com>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Cc: Paul Mackerras <paulus@samba.org>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
LKML-Reference: <4c19ef89.93ecd80a.40dc.fffff8e9@mx.google.com>
Signed-off-by: Stephane Eranian <eranian@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo <acme@redhat.com>

1 files changed, 6 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/tools/perf/Documentation/perf-record.txt b/tools/perf/Documentation/perf-record.txt
index 25576b477c83..3ee27dccfde9 100644
--- a/tools/perf/Documentation/perf-record.txt
+++ b/tools/perf/Documentation/perf-record.txt
@@ -110,6 +110,12 @@ comma-sperated list with no space: 0,1. Ranges of CPUs are specified with -: 0-2
 In per-thread mode with inheritance mode on (default), samples are captured only when
 the thread executes on the designated CPUs. Default is to monitor all CPUs.
 
+-N::
+--no-buildid-cache::
+Do not update the builid cache. This saves some overhead in situations
+where the information in the perf.data file (which includes buildids)
+is sufficient.
+
 SEE ALSO
 --------
 linkperf:perf-stat[1], linkperf:perf-list[1]