[RFC/PATCH 06/10] libbb: add fanotify support on uClibc

[Bartosz Gołaszewski]

2015-08-13 16:27 GMT+02:00 Laurent Bercot <ska-dietlibc at skarnet.org>:
> On 13/08/2015 15:57, Bartosz Golaszewski wrote:
>>
>> Fanotify syscalls are not supported in uClibc. Add a new include
>> file - missing_syscalls.h - implementing the syscalls directly in
>> busybox.
>
>
>  It's not a good idea to start fixing libc problems in applications.
> If you want to use a system call that your favorite libc doesn't support,
> please go fix your favorite libc instead of making busybox uglier -
> why should busybox carry that responsibility?

You're right of course from the engineering point of view, but at the
same time I have always regarded busybox as a piece of software that
get's things done. Uclibc is unfortunately still the default libc in
buildroot (or uclibc-ng for that matter) and is widely used. Adding
fanotify support and fixing readahead are cued on my TODO list, but
given the current (no)release cycle of uClibc there's not much
incentive for me to get to it.

>  Also, it's a bug to guard features with a macro that only identifies
> an implementation. If one day the stars align and a new uClibc release
> comes out that implements fanotify(), your code will break, or become
> redundant at best.
>

Agreed.

2015-08-14 14:46 GMT+02:00 Ari Sundholm <ari at tuxera.com>:
>
> Why not use the existing libbb/missing_syscalls.c? I'm sure you have a
> reason, but I can't figure it out.
>

Because we need to include these calls somewhere, and since they're
just trivial wrappers around syscall() it's best to have them inlined.

-- 
Best regards,
Bartosz Golaszewski