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From: Tim Hockin <thockin@sun.com>
To: Linux Kernel mailing list <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: sysconf - exposing constants to userspace
Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2004 12:48:21 -0800	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20040219204820.GC9155@sun.com> (raw)

What is the preferred way to expose "constants" to userland?  I quoty-finger
"constants" because they may be defined as constants to any given kernel,
they are not necessarily constant over time.

There are things which can be changed as constants which would currently
require a libc recompile.  For example NGROUPS_MAX :).  Since it just got
merged, anyone who wants to use it will have to recompile their libc to get
the new value of NGROUPS_MAX.

I found an old old patch to do this via read-only sysctl() entries.  Should
I resurrect that patch?  Or maybe just do a sys_sysconf() entry?  Or should
I just shut up and tell users to cope with recompiling libc?

-- 
Tim Hockin
Sun Microsystems, Linux Software Engineering
thockin@sun.com
All opinions are my own, not Sun's

             reply	other threads:[~2004-02-19 20:53 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 8+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2004-02-19 20:48 Tim Hockin [this message]
2004-02-19 21:30 ` sysconf - exposing constants to userspace Jeff Sipek
2004-02-20  0:20   ` Jamie Lokier
2004-02-20  0:21     ` Tim Hockin
2004-02-20  0:35       ` Chris Wright
2004-02-20  0:29     ` Jeff Sipek
2004-02-20  0:34       ` Tim Hockin
2004-02-20  0:52       ` Chris Wright

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