Re: PROPOSAL: dot-proc interface [was: /proc stuff]

zmwillow
2001-11-05T03:00:25Z

Jakob ?tergaard wrote:

>Here's my stab at the problems - please comment,
>
>We want to avoid these problems:
> 1) It is hard to parse (some) /proc files from userspace
> 2) As /proc files change, parsers must be changed in userspace
>
>Still, we want to keep on offering
> 3) Human readable /proc files with some amount of pretty-printing
> 4) A /proc fs that can be changed as the kernel needs those changes
>
>
>Taking care of (3) and (4):
>
>Maintaining the current /proc files is very simple, and it offers the system
>administrator a lot of functionality that isn't reasonable to take away now.
>
> * They should stay in a form close to the current one *
>
>
>Taking care of (1) and (2):
>
>For each file "f" in /proc, there will be a ".f" file which is a
>machine-readable version of "f", with the difference that it may contain extra
>information that one may not want to present to the user in "f".
>
>The dot-proc file is basically a binary encoding of Lisp (or XML), e.g. it is a
>list of elements, wherein an element can itself be a list (or a character string,
>or a host-native numeric type. Thus, (key,value) pairs and lists thereof are
>possible, as well as tree structures etc.
>
>All data types are stored in the architecture-native format, and a simple
>library should be sufficient to parse any dot-proc file.
>
>
>So, we need a small change in procfs that does not in any way break
>compatibility - and we need a few lines of C under LGPL to interface with it.
>
>Tell me what you think - It is possible that I could do this (or something
>close) in the near future, unless someone shows me the problem with the
>approach.
>
>Thank you,
>

see http://sourceforge.net/projects/xmlprocfs/
i think this is a good idea that make the kernel output xml format
informations.

best regards.
zmwillow