Re: futex(2) man page update help request

From: Michael Kerrisk (man-pages)
Date: Thu May 15 2014 - 00:52:56 EST


On 05/15/2014 05:12 AM, Carlos O'Donell wrote:
> On 05/14/2014 07:34 PM, Thomas Gleixner wrote:
>> On Wed, 14 May 2014, Carlos O'Donell wrote:
>>
>>> On 05/14/2014 03:03 PM, Michael Kerrisk (man-pages) wrote:
>>>>> However, unless I'm sorely mistaken, the larger problem is that glibc
>>>>> removed the futex() call entirely, so these man pages don't describe
>>>>
>>>> I don't think futex() ever was in glibc--that's by design, and
>>>> completely understandable: no user-space application would want to
>>>> directly use futex(). (BTW, I mispoke in my earlier mail when I said I
>>>> wanted documentation suitable for "writers of library functions" -- I
>>>> meant suitable for "writers of *C library*".)
>>>
>>> I fully agree with Michael here.
>>>
>>> The futex() syscall was never exposed to userspace specifically because
>>> it was an interface we did not want to support forever with a stable ABI.
>>> The futex() syscall is an implementation detail that is shared between
>>> the kernel and the writers of core runtimes for Linux.
>>
>> Nonsense.
>
> What is nonsense?

I suspect there's a misunderstanding between worlds here. Thomas means
that the kernel ABI is stable. You mean, glibc does not want to have to
export an ABI that you have to support.

> I do not want to be responsible for the futex API by having glibc provide
> wrappers. That can't be nonsense since it's a glibc community decision to
> make.

See my above.

Cheers,

Michael

--
Michael Kerrisk
Linux man-pages maintainer; http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/
Linux/UNIX System Programming Training: http://man7.org/training/
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