Re: [PATCH] syscalls: Remove file path comments from headers

From: Arnd Bergmann
Date: Fri Jun 23 2023 - 04:07:17 EST


On Thu, Jun 22, 2023, at 22:17, Sohil Mehta wrote:
> On 6/22/2023 8:10 AM, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
>> Applied to the asm-generic tree, thanks!
>>
>
> Great, thanks for the quick response.
>
> While going through the comments, I was wondering if we have a
> definition of what constitutes a deprecated syscall vs an obsolete one?
>
> For deprecated we have some information saying:
>> /*
>> * Deprecated system calls which are still defined in
>> * include/uapi/asm-generic/unistd.h and wanted by >= 1 arch
>> */
>
> But, I couldn't find anything for obsolete system calls.

I don't think we've ever defined the two terms properly,
I would assume they are used interchangeably here. If we wanted
a definition, 'obsolete' could mean syscalls that are no longer
used by current software while 'deprecated' are those that
are still called by glibc and others on the architectures that
provide them but are emulated through modern variants on other
architectures. Without any documentation on the topic, or a
definite list, other interpretations are equally possible.

Arnd