From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S966111AbXDGQ5g (ORCPT ); Sat, 7 Apr 2007 12:57:36 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S966126AbXDGQ5g (ORCPT ); Sat, 7 Apr 2007 12:57:36 -0400 Received: from wx-out-0506.google.com ([66.249.82.229]:51798 "EHLO wx-out-0506.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S966111AbXDGQ5e (ORCPT ); Sat, 7 Apr 2007 12:57:34 -0400 DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=beta; h=received:message-id:date:from:to:subject:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition; b=mQEcPvxNBk9hilcBBRWFP5O5MzddlkRjxOLxHnDUqldxuLL145iTkIPtBY1/Ugr8HwnWAK+CBjc5gpJ/HV/wS6fSsWe3a/zEbTWA8h5pPKq7RFATtmjzmPULc2edDnvO43RYz6Up6XOu2HCApAJIkSZSsvbuMyaiitrSjbsQexE= Message-ID: Date: Sat, 7 Apr 2007 09:57:32 -0700 From: "Ulrich Drepper" To: "Linux Kernel Mailing List" Subject: If not readdir() then what? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org In their closed chambers (well, workshops, http://lwn.net/Articles/226351/), the filesystem developers complain about readdir. I fully appreciate the difficulties. But what I fail to see so far is any proposal for an alternative interface. The phase to get new functionality included in the next revision of POSIX is over. But that does not mean we should not try to get some sensible new implementation in place. There is, for example, the "High End Computing Extensions Working Group" (the guys who showed up here with their statlite and readdirplus proposals). This is an official working group at the OpenGroup which can produce a document which can be the basis of inclusion in the next revision and become a OpenGroup specification earlier than that. So, if anybody has a proposal for better interfaces let's hear them. "Now" is a very good time to start working on this.