From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S932433AbXAGI0e (ORCPT ); Sun, 7 Jan 2007 03:26:34 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S932435AbXAGI0e (ORCPT ); Sun, 7 Jan 2007 03:26:34 -0500 Received: from smtpq2.tilbu1.nb.home.nl ([213.51.146.201]:40188 "EHLO smtpq2.tilbu1.nb.home.nl" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S932433AbXAGI0d (ORCPT ); Sun, 7 Jan 2007 03:26:33 -0500 Message-ID: <45A0AE5C.6010801@gmail.com> Date: Sun, 07 Jan 2007 09:25:00 +0100 From: Rene Herman User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.9 (X11/20061206) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Amit Choudhary CC: Linux Kernel Subject: Re: [DISCUSS] Making system calls more portable. References: <722886.55398.qm@web55601.mail.re4.yahoo.com> In-Reply-To: <722886.55398.qm@web55601.mail.re4.yahoo.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-15; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-AtHome-MailScanner-Information: Please contact support@home.nl for more information X-AtHome-MailScanner: Found to be clean Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On 01/07/2007 09:15 AM, Amit Choudhary wrote: > Well, system calls today are not portable mainly because they are > invoked using a number and it may happen that a number 'N' may refer > to systemcall_1() on one system/kernel and to systemcall_2() on > another system/kernel. If we're limited to Linux kernels, this seems to not be the case. Great care is taken in keeping this userspace ABI stable -- new system calls are given new numbers. Old system calls may disappear (after a long grace period) but even then I don't believe the number is ever recycled. If your discussion is not limited to Linux kernels, then sure, but being portable at that (sub-libc) level is asking too much. > I hope that I made some sense. Some, but your supposition seems unclear. Rene