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Re: Proposal for a userspace "architecture portability" library
- From: Paul Mackerras <paulus at samba dot org>
- To: Robert Love <rml at novell dot com>
- Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds at osdl dot org>,David Woodhouse <dwmw2 at infradead dot org>,David Howells <dhowells at redhat dot com>, linux-kernel at vger dot kernel dot org,libc-alpha at sources dot redhat dot com
- Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2004 12:47:05 +1100
- Subject: Re: Proposal for a userspace "architecture portability" library
- References: <16818.23575.549824.733470@cargo.ozlabs.ibm.com><1102208924.6052.94.camel@localhost>
Robert Love writes:
> I think that this is an _awesome_ idea. Might want to check out what
> overlap there is with existing glibc interfaces. For example, I presume
> that glibc implements at least some of the atomic operations (but I also
> think having a full suite of atomic operations available is useful).
I don't think glibc exports any atomic operations. As for the
semaphores and spinlocks, clearly you can use the pthread_* functions,
but hopefully the kernel versions are a bit lighter-weight.
> Some of the stuff, like semaphores, isn't really going to port very well
> to user-space. At least not directly, I would not think.
No, for semaphores and rwsems I was going to use futexes. Or maybe we
don't need the kernel's semaphores, rwsems and spinlocks in userspace
at all. I'm open to suggestions.
> FWIW, you have my permission. I've touched spinlock.h a bunch.
Thanks.
Paul.