tytso@mit.edu <tytso@mit.edu> wrote:
> The same arguments generalize to other header files and applications.
> For example, multiple programs need linux/serial.h --- maintaining n
> different copies of the manifest constants for the n programs that
> need to make serial ioctl's simply makes no sense. And again, it
> doesn't seem to make any sense to copy them to the glibc header files
> since they are extremely Linux kernel specific, and the interface is
> defined by the Linux kernel, not by glibc.
Last time I checked, ioctl was defined in libc. Yeah, it's just a
lightweight cover for a kernel call, but that's hardly unusual.
There does need to be a systematic way of getting the defined constants
for ioctl, but that's different from removing ioctl from libc.
[And, in principle, libc *could* map constants from one set of values to
another...]
But it doesn't. In practice, the interface is defined by the kernel,
not by glibc.
And that's a good thing, considering how much trust I currently have in
the glibc folk's ability to keep a backwards-compatible interface. :-(
- Ted
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