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Date: Sun, 22 Apr 2001 10:31:10 -0400 (EDT)
From: Alexander Viro <viro@math.psu.edu>
To: Alon Ziv <alonz@nolaviz.org>
cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
Subject: Re: light weight user level semaphores
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On Sun, 22 Apr 2001, Alon Ziv wrote:

> Well, that's the reason for my small-negative-integer semaphore-FD idea...
> (It won't support select() easily, but poll() is prob'ly good enough)
> Still, there is the problem of read()/write()/etc. semantics; sure, we can
> declare that 'negative FDs' have their own semantics which just happen to
> include poll(), but it sure looks like a kludge...

You _still_ don't get it. The question is not "how to add magic kernel
objects that would look like descriptors and support a binch of
ioctls, allowing to do semaphores", it's "do we need semaphores
to be kernel-level objects". Implementation with pipes allows to avoid
the magic crap - they are real, normal pipes - nothing special from
the kernel POV. read(), write(), etc. are nothing but reading and writing
for pipes.

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