[2025 Project 2] Why is the BMv2 event logger capability not enough for packet trace?

[qobilidop]

Context: https://github.com/p4lang/gsoc/blob/main/2025/ideas_list.md Project 2

As @antoninbas pointed out in the email:

Note that project 2 sounds quite similar to an existing capability of bmv2: https://github.com/p4lang/behavioral-model/blob/main/include/bm/bm_sim/event_logger.h. Messages can be generated for "key" events and "streamed" over multiple possible transports. So I hope this capability can be studied first and then refined instead of building a brand new alternative.

@matthewtlam @jonathan-dilorenzo Any thoughts on this?

[matthewtlam]

@antoninbas My understanding to this project would be creating a class to parse and organize the event logger's messages as a packet trace class. I believe the goal is to not have to manually go through all the BMv2 logs as a user

@jonathan-dilorenzo correct me if I am wrong

[antoninbas]

@matthewtlam there are console text logs and then there are structured event logs. The project idea is only referring to the former, while I referred to the latter in my comment above. Unlike the "console" logs, event logs are only generated for key events such as table lookups. In my mind, the project should be about improving this existing mechanism, e.g. by adding the ability to generate these event messages in Protobuf format.