linux-kernel - using kernel headers in libc headers

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Message-ID: <a36005b50911300837s6fe4da73s973ccbe7401b9989@mail.gmail.com>
Date:	Mon, 30 Nov 2009 08:37:04 -0800
From:	Ulrich Drepper <drepper@...il.com>
To:	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
Subject: using kernel headers in libc headers

The kernel headers nowadays are cleaned up to separate in-kernel
definitions from those that are exported.  That's of course good but
it's unfortunately not sufficient to use (most of) the headers in
glibc.

Take <linux/sched.h> for instance.  The <sched.h> header is defined in
POSIX and therefore the specify which symbols can be defined in which
configuration.  The <linux/sched.h> defines all kinds of symbols,
though, unconditionally.  If you compare it with the glibc header
you'd see that all the CLONE_* symbols and some of the SCHED_* symbols
are only defined in certain configurations (non-POSIX configurations).

It's likely in everybody's interest to get the kernel headers used.
But for this mode #ifdefs are needed.  I'm willing to do the work.
Easy enough to do when I'm going through the headers one-by-one to
enable them in glibc.  But I don't want to start this work unless it's
going to be accepted.  The symbols would be something like

  __USE_MISC

or

  __USE_GNU

These are not macros which the user must define.  The user sets macros
like _GNU_SOURCE etc which then set all the appropriate __USE_* macros
(see "info libc 'Feature Test Macros'" on machines with glibc
installed).  These names are somewhat glibc-specific but other libcs
can (or already have) adapt them.

So, what do you say?
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