Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 14 Sep 2004 07:59:46 +0200 | From | Roger Luethi <> | Subject | Re: [1/1][PATCH] nproc v2: netlink access to /proc information |
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On Sat, 11 Sep 2004 18:25:56 -0400, Albert Cahalan wrote: > > One nitpick: As vmexe and vmlib are always 0 for !CONFIG_MMU, we should > > ifdef them out of the list of offered fields for that configuration (and > > maybe in nproc_ps_field as well). > > No. First of all, I think they can be offered. Until proven > otherwise, I'll assume that the !CONFIG_MMU case is buggy.
I agree with you that those specific fields should be offered for !CONFIG_MMU. However, if for some reason they cannot carry a value that fits the field description, they should not be offered at all. The ambiguity of having 0 mean either "0" or "this field is not available" is bad. Trying to read a specific field _can_ fail, and applications had better handle that case (it's still trivial compared to having to parse different /proc file layouts depending on the configuration).
> mean that fewer apps can run on !CONFIG_MMU boxes. It's > same problem as "All the world's a VAX". It's better that > the apps work; an author working on a Pentium 4 Xeon is > likely to write code that relies on the fields and might > not really understand what "no MMU" is all about.
The presumed wrong assumptions underlying broken tools of the future are not a good base for designing a new interface. My interest is in making it easy to write correct applications (or in fixing broken apps that won't work, say, on !CONFIG_MMU systems).
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