Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1752046AbaFORGA (ORCPT ); Sun, 15 Jun 2014 13:06:00 -0400 Received: from terminus.zytor.com ([198.137.202.10]:40737 "EHLO mail.zytor.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751842AbaFORF7 (ORCPT ); Sun, 15 Jun 2014 13:05:59 -0400 Message-ID: <539DD26B.3060709@zytor.com> Date: Sun, 15 Jun 2014 10:05:47 -0700 From: "H. Peter Anvin" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/24.5.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Rich Felker , Mikael Pettersson CC: Andy Lutomirski , Russ Cox , linux-api@vger.kernel.org, Ian Taylor , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, X86 ML Subject: Re: [RFC 0/2] __vdso_findsym References: <21405.44257.742122.786960@gargle.gargle.HOWL> <20140615143500.GP179@brightrain.aerifal.cx> In-Reply-To: <20140615143500.GP179@brightrain.aerifal.cx> X-Enigmail-Version: 1.6 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On 06/15/2014 07:35 AM, Rich Felker wrote: > > Arguably, it was a mistake for the kernel to expose a virtual ELF to > begin with, and it should just have exposed a "lookup function by > name" operation to begin with. Yes this can be done in userspace, but > I see it more as a matter of "fixing a broken API design". > What the fsck are you smoking? There is immense value in providing a stable and very well-defined data structure, which also happens to be what dynamic linkers already want to consume. Providing a helper for crippled libc applications has potential value. Shaving a few hundred bytes off static applications is a very weak argument, simply because it is such a small fraction of the enormous cost of a static application, and static applications are problematic in a number of other ways, especially the lack of ability to fix bugs. Treating the kernel as an ersatz dynamic library for "static" applications is kind of silly -- after all, why not provide an entire libc in the vdso? I have actually seen people advocate for doing that. -hpa -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/