From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S936937AbXGQVEg (ORCPT ); Tue, 17 Jul 2007 17:04:36 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1765164AbXGQVEX (ORCPT ); Tue, 17 Jul 2007 17:04:23 -0400 Received: from mail.gmx.net ([213.165.64.20]:37029 "HELO mail.gmx.net" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with SMTP id S1760832AbXGQVEU (ORCPT ); Tue, 17 Jul 2007 17:04:20 -0400 Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, akpm@osdl.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2007 23:04:17 +0200 From: "Michael Kerrisk" In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20070717210417.257740@gmx.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <469C6C9B.4070801@gmx.net> Subject: Re: timerfd(2) draft man page plus questions To: Davide Libenzi X-Authenticated: #24879014 X-Flags: 0001 X-Mailer: WWW-Mail 6100 (Global Message Exchange) X-Priority: 3 X-Provags-ID: V01U2FsdGVkX1+UAms9pL2UXoqFXyDT7DLdxUSwwJMaJJNkm0sYah W3WuQ9Qt4rjQxwXNKxR5g86AKf07SROl0G4w== Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-GMX-UID: 6RmucuwWf2IsFPH2F21oPmx4dWxlc5aA Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org > > 1. timer_settime() and setitimer() both permit the caller to obtain > > the old value of the timer when modifying an existing timer. Why > > doesn't timerfd() provide this functionality? > > I don't know ;) Would it be any useful? Well given that the two older APIs both provide this functionality, it seems that it is desired in applications. It is a shame that the new API doesn't have this. It could be added (I'm inclined to say, it should be): the only problem is that the syscall is now out in the wild, so a change at this point would not be ABI compatible. However, it only just got into the wild (and hasn't made it into glibc yet), so now would be a good time to fix it, if you are agreeable, and the kernel gatekeepers are prepared to tolerate the ABI change. Cheers, Michael -- Michael Kerrisk maintainer of Linux man pages Sections 2, 3, 4, 5, and 7 Want to help with man page maintenance? Grab the latest tarball at http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/docs/manpages , read the HOWTOHELP file and grep the source files for 'FIXME'.