Proposal for simpler libc rseq registration ABI across libraries

[Mathieu Desnoyers]

Hi,

Here is a email thread dedicated to discuss a simpler ABI proposal for
interaction between libc and early adopter libraries/applications with
respect to registration of restartable sequences (rseq).

This is based on my current proposal
"glibc: Perform rseq(2) registration at C startup and thread creation (v7)"
https://lore.kernel.org/patchwork/patch/1041324/

We can move the __rseq_lib_abi TLS refcount and register_state to an external
library (librseq).

glibc would expose a new global "int" variable symbol __rseq_handled acting as
a boolean. It would be initially 0. glibc would set it to 1 in its C startup
code when it effectively handles rseq registration. That symbol would _not_ be
a TLS (it's global).

librseq would be a new library used by rseq early adopters. It would expose a
rseq register/unregister API, which internally would:

- Check whether __rseq_handled is true. If so, it would do nothing, leaving
  rseq registration to the libc.
- If __rseq_handled is false, deal with many early adopters with TLS refcount
  and register_state variables internal to librseq.so.

That should take care of minimizing those metrics:
- libc ABI complexity and maintenance burden in the long term,
- pain for rseq early adopters when upgrading to newer libc which supports rseq
  registration,

Does that make sense ?

Thanks,

Mathieu

-- 
Mathieu Desnoyers
EfficiOS Inc.
http://www.efficios.com