Re: linux-next: add utrace tree

Linus Torvalds
2010-01-22T01:30:13Z

On Thu, 21 Jan 2010, Andrew Morton wrote:
>
> ptrace is a nasty, complex part of the kernel which has a long history
> of problems, but it's all been pretty quiet in there for the the past few
> years.

More importantly, we're not ever going to get rid of it.

Quite frankly, judging my all past history we have ever seen in kernel
interfaces, new an non-portable interfaces simply are never used. The
whole question whether they are nicer or not is entirely immaterial.

I'm personally very dubious that there are any merits to utrace that
outweigh the very clear disadvantages: just another layer that adds a new
level of abstraction to the only interface that people actually _use_,
namely ptrace.

But I haven't followed utrace. I doubt _anybody_ has, except for the
utrace people themselves.

Linus