From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Florian Weimer Subject: Re: Official Linux system wrapper library? Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2018 09:11:10 +0100 Message-ID: <875zx2vhpd.fsf@oldenburg.str.redhat.com> References: <877ehjx447.fsf@oldenburg.str.redhat.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Return-path: In-Reply-To: (Daniel Colascione's message of "Sun, 11 Nov 2018 06:22:59 -0800") Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org To: Daniel Colascione Cc: "Michael Kerrisk (man-pages)" , linux-kernel , Joel Fernandes , Linux API , Willy Tarreau , Vlastimil Babka , Carlos O'Donell , "libc-alpha@sourceware.org" List-Id: linux-api@vger.kernel.org * Daniel Colascione: > If the kernel provides a system call, libc should provide a C wrapper > for it, even if in the opinion of the libc maintainers, that system > call is flawed. It's not that simple, I think. What about bdflush? socketcall? getxpid? osf_gettimeofday? set_robust_list? There are quite a few irregularities, and some editorial discretion appears to be unavoidable. Even if we were to provide perfectly consistent system call wrappers under separate names, we'd still expose different calling conventions for things like off_t to applications, which would make using some of the system calls quite difficult and surprisingly non-portable. Thanks, Florian