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    SubjectRe: [patch] inotify for 2.6.11
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    Christoph Hellwig writes:
    > On Sat, Mar 05, 2005 at 07:40:06PM -0500, Robert Love wrote:
    >> On Sun, 2005-03-06 at 00:04 +0000, Christoph Hellwig wrote:

    >>> The user interface is still bogus.
    >>
    >> I presume you are talking about the ioctl. I have tried to engage you
    >> and others on what exactly you prefer instead. I have said that moving
    >> to a write interface is fine but I don't see how ut is _any_ better than
    >> the ioctl. Write is less typed, in fact, since we lose the command
    >> versus argument delineation.
    >>
    >> But if it is a anonymous decision, I'll switch it. Or take patches. ;-)
    >> It isn't a big deal.
    >
    > See the review I sent. Write is exactly the right interface for that kind
    > of thing. For comment vs argument either put the number first so we don't
    > have the problem of finding a delinator that isn't a valid filename, or
    > use '\0' as such.

    That's just putrid. You've proposed an interface that
    combines the worst of ASCII with the worst of binary.

    It is now well-established that ASCII interfaces are
    horribly slow. This one will be no exception... but
    with the '\0' in there, you have a binary interface.
    So, it's an evil hybrid.

    An ioctl() is a syscall with scope restricting it to a
    single fd. This is a fine user interface, not a bogus one.
    (keep 32-on-64 operation in mind to be polite)

    If you'd rather have a normal (global) system call though,
    that'll do too, likely leading to a bit more type checking
    in the glibc-provided headers.

    Adding plain old syscalls is rather nice actually.
    It's only a pain at first, while waiting for glibc
    to catch up.


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