Re: [RFC] Change sendfile header

Christoph Hellwig
2003-01-30T08:24:51Z

On Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 10:03:04PM -0500, Bill Davidsen wrote:
> I suggest that the header holding the prototype for sendfile should not be
> in unistd.h because:
>
> 1 - sendfile is not in SuS, an is extremely non-standard
> 2 - there is a sendfile in BSD and it's totally different
> 3 - there is no man page for sendfile in Solaris, but there is a
> definition in one of the libraries which is not Linux compatible
> 4 - just putting the "not portable" warning in the man page to counteract
> the impression given by the <unistd.h> is not enough, programmers
> usually only read the man page to get the args right.
>
> Since Linux sendfile is totally applicable only to Linux, it would seem
> that a better name for the header file, like linux/sendfile.h, would be
> better. This has the advantage of not breaking executables, and requiring
> use of a header file which makes it much harder to overlook the
> portability issue.

You're rant is totally inappropinquate because:

1 - this is a glibc issue, applications should not include kernel
headers
2 - there is no sendfile declaration in glibc's <unistd.h>
3 - there _is_ a <sys/sendfile.h> for sendfile(64) in glibc
4 - solaris _does_ have a linux-compatible sendfile now