GhostScope Roadmap (Milestones)

June 7, 2026 · View on GitHub

GhostScope is still evolving quickly. The milestones below are ordered from “strengthen core capabilities” to “polish experience” and finally “expand language and deployment coverage”.

Chained array access

  • One-dimensional chained array access now supports constant and expression indices, including chain-tail a.b.c[i], chain-middle a.b[i].c, and address-of forms such as &arr[i].
  • Remaining work focuses on multi-dimensional arrays.

Container tracing enhancements

  • Most PID-based container tracing scenarios for -p are now in place.
  • Current validated coverage includes:
    • host -> private PID-namespace container
    • private PID-namespace container -> same private PID namespace
    • private PID-namespace container -> nested child container
    • --pid=host container -> same host-PID view (smoke)
  • The remaining milestone work is narrower:
    • improve -t lifecycle maintenance across PID-namespace boundaries, especially host -> private container cases
    • keep tightening edge cases where helper availability and PID mapping are still soft constraints
    • WSL remains outside the supported runtime scope today
  • See Container support and limits and Limitations.

Uprobe enhancements

  • Add support for sleepable uprobes (uprobe.s / uretprobe.s) so GhostScope can use sleepable helpers where appropriate, especially for more reliable user-memory reads.
  • Add support for multi-attach uprobes (uprobe.multi / uretprobe.multi) to scale better when a script expands into many probe points.
  • Keep compatibility fallbacks for kernels or libbpf/Aya paths that still require regular uprobe attachments.

Stack Unwinding

  • DWARF-only bt / backtrace is now supported for compact CFI rows that can be executed safely in eBPF, including deep stacks through a tail-call unwind step program.
  • Continue improving CFI coverage, cross-module accuracy, stop-status diagnostics, and performance for large debug-info workloads.
  • Keep the TUI and CLI renderers source-aware, with structured TUI display and stable plain output for scripts.

Stability & accuracy

  • Keep fixing defects, hardening error handling, and ensuring data consistency.
  • Grow automated and regression coverage so the core workflows stay dependable.

Performance via bpftime

  • Evaluate switching from kernel uprobes to userspace eBPF with bpftime to cut context-switch overhead.

Advanced language features

  • Compiled languages: prioritize modern Rust features (async functions, trait objects, etc.).
  • Interpreted languages: explore cooperation with runtimes such as Lua to surface variables/stack state.

Client-server execution model

  • Typical scenario: sources and debug info live in the cloud, while binaries run on test rigs or local hosts.
  • Goal: keep GhostScope’s TUI on the control side and run the eBPF agent on the target machine, similar to gdb/gdbserver.
  • This will come after the core functionality stabilizes to avoid diluting near-term focus.