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

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Message-ID: <875zx2vhpd.fsf@oldenburg.str.redhat.com>
Date:   Mon, 12 Nov 2018 09:11:10 +0100
From:   Florian Weimer <fweimer@...hat.com>
To:     Daniel Colascione <dancol@...gle.com>
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>,
        Willy Tarreau <w@....eu>, Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@...e.cz>,
        "Carlos O'Donell" <carlos@...hat.com>,
        "libc-alpha\@sourceware.org" <libc-alpha@...rceware.org>
Subject: Re: Official Linux system wrapper library?

* Daniel Colascione:

> If the kernel provides a system call, libc should provide a C wrapper
> for it, even if in the opinion of the libc maintainers, that system
> call is flawed.

It's not that simple, I think.  What about bdflush?  socketcall?
getxpid?  osf_gettimeofday?  set_robust_list?  There are quite a few
irregularities, and some editorial discretion appears to be unavoidable.

Even if we were to provide perfectly consistent system call wrappers
under separate names, we'd still expose different calling conventions
for things like off_t to applications, which would make using some of
the system calls quite difficult and surprisingly non-portable.

Thanks,
Florian