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

Thomas Gleixner
2008-03-21T13:50:01Z

On Thu, 20 Mar 2008, Roland McGrath wrote:
> > Wouldn't it be nicer to just let "arch_ptrace()" return a flag saying
> > whether it handled things or not?
>
> It would certainly be nicer. I would prefer:
>
> extern int arch_ptrace(struct task_struct *child, long request,
> long addr, long data, long *retval);
>
> where it returns an error code or it returns 0 and *retval is the value
> or it returns 1 and it didn't do anything.
>
> So this ugliness seemed like a better bet than waiting for 20 more
> arch sign-offs before any of it could go in. You are certainly in a
> position to just change the generic signature and make every arch do
> the update (or fix your typos if you just tweak them all blind), and
> let them grumble. I did not presume to do so.

What about adding a CONFIG_ARCH_HAS_PTRACE2, which is set by the archs
which are converted. For those which are not you add a fallback
implementation:

#ifndef CONFIG_ARCH_HAS_PTRACE2
static int arch_ptrace2(whatever your favourite interface)
{
ret = arch_ptrace();
return do_ugly_fixups(ret);
}
#endif

That way you introduce the new interface and convert one or two archs
initialy without breaking the other 22.

At the same time you mark arch_ptrace() deprecated so it will get the
attention of the arch maintainers pretty fast. Once all archs are
converted we can remove the config flag and the fallback quirk.

Thanks,
tglx