Messages in this thread | | | From | Arnd Bergmann <> | Subject | Re: I.1 - System calls - ioctl | Date | Mon, 22 Jun 2009 19:41:48 +0200 |
| |
On Monday 22 June 2009, Ingo Molnar wrote: > There is another, more theoretical argument in favor of > sys_perf_counter_chattr(): it is quite conceivable that as usage of > perfcounters expands we want to change more and more attributes. So > even though right now the ioctl just about manages to serve this > role, it would be more future-proof to use sys_perf_counter_chattr() > and deprecate the ioctl() straight away - to not even leave a > chance for some ioctl crap to seep into the API. > > So ... we are on two minds about this, and if people dont mind a > second syscall entry, we are glad to add it.
I think adding one or more system calls is definitely worth it if that means getting rid of the ioctl interface here. While I don't generally mind adding ioctl calls, I would much prefer to restrict their use to device files, sockets and to the existing cases for regular files.
Conceptually, ioctl is a different class of interface from the 'new system call' case, in a number of ways. For new subsystems I would just never mix them by allowing ioctl on something that was not returned by open() or socket().
Arnd <><
| |