From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Florian Weimer Subject: Re: Official Linux system wrapper library? Date: Sun, 11 Nov 2018 11:40:44 +0100 Message-ID: <87o9avx5g3.fsf@oldenburg.str.redhat.com> References: <20181111081725.GA30248@1wt.eu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Return-path: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: libc-alpha-owner@sourceware.org In-Reply-To: (Daniel Colascione's message of "Sun, 11 Nov 2018 00:25:03 -0800") To: Daniel Colascione Cc: Willy Tarreau , "Michael Kerrisk (man-pages)" , linux-kernel , Joel Fernandes , Linux API , Vlastimil Babka , Carlos O'Donell , "libc-alpha@sourceware.org" List-Id: linux-api@vger.kernel.org * Daniel Colascione: > On Sun, Nov 11, 2018 at 12:17 AM, Willy Tarreau wrote: >> >> On Sun, Nov 11, 2018 at 07:55:30AM +0100, Michael Kerrisk (man-pages) wrote: >> > [1] https://sourceware.org/ >> >> >> Bah, after all, this >> >> wipes quite a bit of the shame I feel every time I do something to >> >> bypass it :-/ >> >> >> The sad thing is that the energy wasted arguing in the bug above could >> >> have been better spent designing and implementing a generic solution >> >> to expose syscalls without depending on glibc's politics anymore. >> >> >> Willy >> >> bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=6399 is a >> > longstanding example. >> >> This one was a sad read and shows that applications will continue to >> suffer from glibc's prehistorical view on operating systems > > Yes. I'm really not sure what glibc's current policies are meant to > accomplish. They don't serve any useful purpose. There seems to be > this weird subtext that glibc has leverage to change OS design, and it > really doesn't. It's a misplaced idealism and ends up just hurting > everyone. I'm not sure what this comment tries to accomplish. glibc tries to serve many masters: Current and past Linux kernel interfaces, current Hurd kernel interfaces, different versions of POSIX and C (and even C++), current C/C++ programming practice, historic C programming practice, current and historic Linux userspace programming, various platform ABIs, just to name a few. These requirements are often in conflict. >> Seeing comments suggesting an application should open >> /proc/$PID makes me really wonder if people actually want to use slow >> and insecure applications designed this way. > > That's a separate point. Yes, gettid should have a wrapper, but *also* > we should have an FD-based interface to processes, because outside > specialized contexts (e.g., parent-child waiting), the traditional > Unix process API really is impossible to use safely. But that's a > separate ongoing discussion. A descriptor-based API would not help glibc that much because there is an expectation encoded into many C programs that the C library does not keep permanently open descriptors for its own internal use. Thanks, Florian