Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 25 Nov 2014 10:10:32 -0800 | From | "Paul E. McKenney" <> | Subject | Re: [PATCH v4 0/7] kernel tinification: optionally compile out splice family of syscalls (splice, vmsplice, tee and sendfile) |
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On Tue, Nov 25, 2014 at 12:13:05PM -0500, David Miller wrote: > From: Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@infradead.org> > Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2014 08:17:58 -0800 > > > Is the splice family of syscalls the only one that tiny has identified > > for optional building or can we expect similar treatment for other > > syscalls? > > > > Why will many embedded systems not need these syscalls? You know > > exactly what apps they run and you are positive that those apps do > > not use splice? > > I think starting to compile out system calls is a very slippery > slope we should not begin the journey down. > > This changes the forward facing interface to userspace.
I certainly sympathize with this concern, given the importance of software portability. However, the tiny-hardware alternative appears ot some sort of special-purpose embedded OS, which most definitely will suffer from software compatibility issues. I guess that the good news is that much of the tiny hardware that used to be 8 or 16 bits is now 32 bits, which means that it has at least some chance of running some form of Linux. ;-)
Thanx, Paul
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