Re: [PATCH 6/8] ptrace: arch_ptrace -ENOSYS return

Christoph Hellwig
2008-03-20T07:40:05Z

On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 07:40:25PM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>
> And I have to say, I really hate that
>
> ret = arch_ptrace(child, request, addr, data);
> if (ret = -ENOSYS && !forced_successful_syscall_return())
> ret = ptrace_request(child, request, addr, data);
>
> thing. Instead of doing it that ugly way (return value and a special
> per-arch forced_successful_syscall_return() thing), this really smells
> like you just want to change the calling conventions for "arch_ptrace()"
> instead.
>
> Wouldn't it be nicer to just let "arch_ptrace()" return a flag saying
> whether it handled things or not?

I think the easiest and cleanest would be to just drop this whole
series. There's no inherent advantage of

ret = -ENOSYS;

in the arch_ptrace default case over

ret = ptrace_request(...);