linux-kernel - Re: Official Linux system wrapper library?

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Date:   Sun, 11 Nov 2018 00:25:03 -0800
From:   Daniel Colascione <dancol@...gle.com>
To:     Willy Tarreau <w@....eu>
Cc:     "Michael Kerrisk (man-pages)" <mtk.manpages@...il.com>,
        linux-kernel <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        Joel Fernandes <joelaf@...gle.com>,
        Linux API <linux-api@...r.kernel.org>,
        Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@...e.cz>,
        Florian Weimer <fweimer@...hat.com>,
        "Carlos O'Donell" <carlos@...hat.com>,
        "libc-alpha@...rceware.org" <libc-alpha@...rceware.org>
Subject: Re: Official Linux system wrapper library?

On Sun, Nov 11, 2018 at 12:17 AM, Willy Tarreau <w@....eu> wrote:
>
> On Sun, Nov 11, 2018 at 07:55:30AM +0100, Michael Kerrisk (man-pages) wrote:
> > [1] https://sourceware.org/
>
>
> Bah, after all, this
>
> wipes quite a bit of the shame I feel every time I do something to
>
> bypass it :-/
>
>
> The sad thing is that the energy wasted arguing in the bug above could
>
> have been better spent designing and implementing a generic solution
>
> to expose syscalls without depending on glibc's politics anymore.
>
>
> Willy
>
> bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=6399 is a
> >     longstanding example.
>
> This one was a sad read and shows that applications will continue to
> suffer from glibc's prehistorical view on operating systems

Yes. I'm really not sure what glibc's current policies are meant to
accomplish. They don't serve any useful purpose. There seems to be
this weird subtext that glibc has leverage to change OS design, and it
really doesn't. It's a misplaced idealism and ends up just hurting
everyone.

>
> Seeing comments suggesting an application should open
> /proc/$PID makes me really wonder if people actually want to use slow
> and insecure applications designed this way.

That's a separate point. Yes, gettid should have a wrapper, but *also*
we should have an FD-based interface to processes, because outside
specialized contexts (e.g., parent-child waiting), the traditional
Unix process API really is impossible to use safely. But that's a
separate ongoing discussion.