System-call wrappers for glibc [LWN.net]

System-call wrappers for glibc

Posted Sep 20, 2019 6:31 UTC (Fri) by epa (subscriber, #39769)
In reply to: System-call wrappers for glibc by quotemstr
Parent article: System-call wrappers for glibc

If the multiplex call is wrapped by the C library then you can have a separate C function for each mode, each one with a sane and type-safe interface. System calls are a finite resource but C library interfaces are not. However, if you take the view that the C library should provide exactly the interface given by the kernel, a messy system call will result in messy user code.

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System-call wrappers for glibc

Posted Sep 20, 2019 6:47 UTC (Fri) by mfuzzey (subscriber, #57966) [Link] (1 responses)

I would say the kernel and the glibc developers should work together *before* new syscalls are set in stone to, as far as possible, come up with a design that suites everyone and makes the wrappers simpler.

That may not be possible in every case for technical reasons but I think up to recently it was more of lack of communication between the kernel and glibc developers that caused most problems rather than specific technical issues.

System-call wrappers for glibc

Posted Sep 20, 2019 7:58 UTC (Fri) by jani (subscriber, #74547) [Link]

FWIW, this is what we try to do in the graphics subsystem for uapi. The userspace part needs to be agreed on and basically ready to merge in the relevant userspace upstream projects before the kernel part lands.

Details at https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/gpu/drm-uapi.html#...