Re: [PATCH -mm 00/43] user_regset framework -- arch maintainers take note!

[Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>]

* Roland McGrath <roland@redhat.com> wrote:

> This is a large series of patches, but there are only a couple that 
> you need to read in detail to know how to get started on cleaning up 
> your arch code (1, 4, 6).
> 
> user_regset is a new kernel-internal interface into the arch code for 
> accessing the user-space view of machine-specific state (registers et 
> al--everything machine-specific that is visible via ptrace and the 
> like, or should be).  The idea is that arch code will have just one 
> place it has to support fetching and changing the user-visible machine 
> state of a user thread.  This same interface can be used for writing 
> core dumps, to underlie the implementation of PTRACE_GETREGS, 
> PTRACE_SETREGS, and the like, and by any new set of debugging 
> facilities that might come along.
[...]
> Patches 26 through 43 affect only arch/x86 code.  I have not CC'd 
> these ones to linux-arch.  They include a bunch of cleanup that is 
> specific to the idiosyncracies of the x86 code and isn't interesting 
> as an example for what another arch would do.

thanks Roland - this is a really impressive set of cleanups 
generalizations!

Testing feedback: i've put the x86 and core bits into x86.git and your 
regset series has so far successfully passed a couple of hundred 
iterations of random-qa on 32-bit and 64-bit x86 as well. (with a few 
ptrace tests added to the mix as well) So it's all green as far as 
arch/x86 and core goes :-)

	Ingo