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Re: support for calling Linux syscalls directly
On 02/12/2013 10:04 AM, Rich Felker wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 12, 2013 at 12:52:52PM -0500, David Miller wrote:
>> From: chrubis@suse.cz
>> Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2013 18:46:38 +0100
>>
>>> I do the LTP[1] which makes legitimate use of syscall(3) as for the
>>> testing purposes we need to be able to call bare syscalls in order to
>>> validate both glibc and kernel API. And removing the call would mess
>>> backward compatibility.
>>
>> I don't think it makes sense for every source tree that wants to
>> call syscall directly to have to duplicate over and over again the
>> argument passing quirks of various architectures.
>>
>> Multiple instances of such tricky code means multiple places for
>> the same bugs over and over again.
>
> LTP is a very special case. It's a test suite for the kernel API/ABI,
> so of course it needs to be aware of (and testing!) these differences
> to make sure nobody breaks them (which would in turn break glibc).
>
> In any case, I don't think anybody's proposing that the syscall()
> function itself be removed from glibc, just that the deficiencies
> which necessitate its use in some application code be fixed so that
> its use can be phased out in most applications.
>
Right... LTP actually *wants* all the quirks exposed.
-hpa