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Re: Principles for API sources
- From: Joseph Myers <joseph at codesourcery dot com>
- To: Rich Felker <dalias at libc dot org>
- Cc: <libc-alpha at sourceware dot org>
- Date: Fri, 6 Nov 2015 18:35:32 +0000
- Subject: Re: Principles for API sources
- Authentication-results: sourceware.org; auth=none
- References: <alpine dot DEB dot 2 dot 10 dot 1511061326480 dot 10753 at digraph dot polyomino dot org dot uk> <20151106182724 dot GB3818 at brightrain dot aerifal dot cx>
On Fri, 6 Nov 2015, Rich Felker wrote:
> > * We should respect that other communities do have good processes for API
> > review, in particular as regards Linux kernel syscalls added in the past
> > few years, so that most of the design review for a new API has already
> > been done if that API comes to us from an external source.
>
> I disagree that this is the case; I think we should be actively
> pushing for a cross-implementation consensus based process to improve
> the situation here. In particular Linux has introduced a number of
> very buggy APIs due to subtle type errors that would have been caught
> by any proper review: things like sendmmsg/recvmmsg, x32 timespec,
I'm talking specifically about APIs added in the past few years (and
specifically about APIs that went through the linux-api mailing list
rather than being pushed through quietly without involving linux-api).
(And in most case, I think the glibc interface doing something subtly
different from the syscall would likely make things worse.)
--
Joseph S. Myers
joseph@codesourcery.com