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Subject: Re: Official Linux system wrapper library?
To:     Daniel Colascione <dancol@google.com>,
        Florian Weimer <fweimer@redhat.com>
Cc:     "Michael Kerrisk (man-pages)" <mtk.manpages@gmail.com>,
        linux-kernel <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
        Joel Fernandes <joelaf@google.com>,
        Linux API <linux-api@vger.kernel.org>,
        Willy Tarreau <w@1wt.eu>, Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>,
        Carlos O'Donell <carlos@redhat.com>,
        "libc-alpha@sourceware.org" <libc-alpha@sourceware.org>
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From:   Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>
Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department
Message-ID: <11149279-14f7-68b4-dc5e-d90924d40d0c@cs.ucla.edu>
Date:   Sun, 11 Nov 2018 17:44:52 -0800
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Daniel Colascione wrote:
> This resistance to exposing the capabilities of
> the system as they are, even in flawed and warty form, is what I meant
> by "misplaced idealism" in my previous message.

With my application-developer hat on I prefer some resistance to flaws and 
warts, as the resistance gives me a better feel for which functions are 
problematic and which can be used more reliably. If glibc is missing Linux 
syscall functionality that I really need then I can use syscall (with the usual 
caveats) and I've done that on occasion (and have regretted it later too :-). It 
is helpful for glibc to prefer mild curation to slavishly copying an API that 
can be a bit helter-skelter at times.