glibc at the Toolchains microconference at LPC 2019

[Szabolcs Nagy]

On 27/06/2019 10:39, Dmitry V. Levin wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 26, 2019 at 05:04:52PM -0400, Carlos O'Donell wrote:
> [...]
>> Could you please review the language here:
>> https://sourceware.org/glibc/wiki/Consensus#WIP:_Kernel_syscalls_wrappers
> 
> I suggest adding that there is no need to add wrappers for those syscalls
> that already have dedicated libraries.
> 
> For example, such multiplexers as bpf(2) and keyctl(2) already have
> dedicated libraries (libbpf and libkeyutils, respectively) that provide
> APIs on top of these raw syscalls.

there are many issues doing raw syscalls e.g.
the x32 type mess or cancellation support.

external library projects can have different level
of quality, supported abis, header conformance,
security process etc. and they almost always mix
libc and linux uapi headers and types.

so i'm against relying on external libraries
doing raw syscalls (they may provide additional
functionality but the syscall itself should
be in libc)

> 
> keyctl(2) manual page explicitly says that "rather than using this system
> call directly, you probably want to use the various library functions
> mentioned in the descriptions of individual operations".
> 
>