Removing `apitrace trim-auto`

[Mark Janes]

José Fonseca <jose.r.fonseca at gmail.com> writes:

> Hi,
>
> In sake of shrinking apitrace code base and keeping things maintainable I
> plan to remove the `apitrace trim-auto` functionality.
>
> trim-auto was added in 2013 by Carl Worth, and is capable of trimming
> frames for simple traces, but it hasn't been maintained since, and
> generalising to complex traces is IMO an almost vertical uphill battle.
> From what I gather from several bug reports, I'm personally not aware of
> users being actually able to use this in practice as it stands.
>
> Furthermore, I think that any attempt to "state tracking" in apitrace is
> doomed to failure, particularly with the OpenGL API.  This is because
> OpenGL API is mish mash of inconsistent extensions and it would require an
> army of developers to pull it off, and neither will change in the
> foreseeable future.  In fact, there are good chances that OpenGL is
> destined to be a legacy API and attracts less and less mind share.
>
> So, yes, while having Apitrace recording/replaying the all calls from the
> very start is admittedly very dumb and slow, it's something that is both
> *reliable* and *simple*.  And that's good enough for me, and for a lot of
> people I suspect.  At any rate, it trumps complex and unreliable all the
> time.
>
> That said, if watching glretrace to replay every call from scratch for
> every state lookup is too much to bear, then the suggestion of
> https://github.com/janesma/apitrace/wiki/frameretrace-branch of making
> glretrace sort of a daemon that keeps looping the calls withing a frame of
> interest seems a much better compromise.  That should work a lot of the
> time, and it's not really that complex, since there's no need for tracking
> any state other than the frame boundaries.

I've been continuing work on this branch, and recorded a demo of it at
the Embedded Linux Conference:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oniC93r2o9I&index=78&list=PLbzoR-pLrL6pSlkQDW7RpnNLuxPq6WVUR
(FrameRetrace starts around 44 minute mark)

> So I'll yank this out.  If anybody has any concern or has been using this
> functionality with success please do let me know.
>
> Jose
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