BPF Tracing Gets a Boost: New BTF Data to Track Inlined Functions

Debugging Information for Inlined Functions

At the 2026 Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory-Management, and BPF Summit, Alan Maguire proposed adding inlining information to BPF Type Format (BTF) to enable tracing of inlined functions. With over 100,000 inlined functions in the kernel, current tracing often misses calls. Maguire's design adds location sections, prototypes, and parameters, totaling ~11MB of data (3.5MB compressed). He also addressed tooling challenges by embedding parse instructions in BTF.