On Mar 24, 2006, at 20:36:15, Jeff Dike wrote:
On Fri, Mar 24, 2006 at 05:46:27PM -0500, Kyle Moffett wrote:
4) UML runs into a lot of problems when glibc's headers and the
native kernel headers headers conflict.
UML has other issues with conflicts between the native kernel
headers and the GLIBC-provided stubs. It's been mentioned on the
prior threads about this topic that this sort of system would ease
most of the issues that UML runs into.
Actually, this isn't quite the same as what UML hits. My problem
with the kernel headers is that they are a mixture of things that
are usable in userspace and things that aren't. This is closely
related, but not identical to, things which are part of the ABI and
things which aren't.
For example, the kernel locks are quite usable in userspace, but
you would never make them part of the ABI.
So, a set of KABI headers would likely make UML's headers cleaner,
by avoiding copying arch headers and using various nasty tricks to
disable objectionable pieces of headers which I steal from the arch.
So what I really want is a superset of the KABI headers, but the
KABI will give me most of what I want.
So perhaps could we define an informal subset of the kernel code that
works in both userspace and kernel-space and put it in include/libk?
Stuff like linked lists, spinlocks (depends on arch, may not be
supported), etc could be in linux/libk and linux/include/libk or
similar, and then from there included into linux/include/linux/
list.h, etc, as well as into the UML files that need it. Since the
provider and user would both be the Linux kernel, I see no issues
with trying to provide a stable interface of any kind, especially if
we document it as "PRIVATE - FOR KERNEL USE ONLY!!!" with big warning
signs. As a nice bonus, this would make it possible to implement some
user-space unit tests of various pieces.
Cheers,
Kyle Moffett
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