Re: Proposal for a userspace "architecture portability" library

[Paul Mackerras <paulus@samba.org>]

Robert Love writes:

> I think that this is an _awesome_ idea.  Might want to check out what
> overlap there is with existing glibc interfaces.  For example, I presume
> that glibc implements at least some of the atomic operations (but I also
> think having a full suite of atomic operations available is useful).

I don't think glibc exports any atomic operations.  As for the
semaphores and spinlocks, clearly you can use the pthread_* functions,
but hopefully the kernel versions are a bit lighter-weight.

> Some of the stuff, like semaphores, isn't really going to port very well
> to user-space.  At least not directly, I would not think.

No, for semaphores and rwsems I was going to use futexes.  Or maybe we
don't need the kernel's semaphores, rwsems and spinlocks in userspace
at all.  I'm open to suggestions.

> FWIW, you have my permission.  I've touched spinlock.h a bunch.

Thanks.

Paul.