Re: Syscall numbers for BProc

H. Peter Anvin
2003-04-08T19:08:02Z

Followup to: <20030405201537.GA18755@lanl.gov>
By author: hendriks@lanl.gov
In newsgroup: linux.dev.kernel
>
> The reason it is the way it is because when I'm trying to avoid
> stomping on other syscalls, having a small foot print is a good thing.
>
> BProc will always be a fringe kind of thing. Adding more than a
> syscall or two seems like quite a bit of polution in the main kernel
> to me. Similarly, I don't think the main kernel should include the
> BProc patch. It changes fairly often, isn't 100% unintrusive and
> would be used by less than .1% of people out there.
>
> Breaking out every call into a separate syscall number would also make
> it more difficult to add new features in the future.
>

Well, first of all, multiplexes break a lot of tools. But worse, they
lead to really badly designed APIs partially because of lack of
review. You have just demonstrated this phenomenon...

-hpa
--
<hpa@transmeta.com> at work, <hpa@zytor.com> in private!
"Unix gives you enough rope to shoot yourself in the foot."
Architectures needed: ia64 m68k mips64 ppc ppc64 s390 s390x sh v850 x86-64