PSARC 2009/210 uname -c

[Sebastien Roy]

On Wed, 2009-04-01 at 16:31 +0200, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> Sebastien Roy <Sebastien.Roy at Sun.COM> wrote:
> 
> > Solution:
> >
> > This case proposes to add such a feature to the kernel by introducing a
> > new -c option ('c' for "credits) to the uname command.  The output is
> > not an Interface, but consists of a newline separated list of names of
> > people who contributed to the kernel.
> 
> Will this change introduce an "unlimited" string length feature for kernel 
> interfaces or will the number of resulting lines be limited to 42?
> 
> How do you retrieve the needed buffer space?

While the rest of the uname data comes from the uname system call, this
option will necessitate a separate mechanism.  This option will read its
data from a file in the filesystem rather than from a kernel system
call.

I should add that the existing -a option will not be modified to include
-c (I didn't mention that initially because it seemed obvious).

> How do you like to define the "credits" interface between device drivers
> and "the kernel"?

Device driver developers who contribute their drivers to the ON
consolidation could be included in the list.  An interface for the
automatic inclusion of unbundled 3rd party driver developers is not part
of this case (much like pidgin plugin developers aren't included in the
credits for the pidgin application).

> Do you plan to create a new panic() condition "panic: unknown credit list"
> when the sysinfo() system call is not able to load all drivers in order 
> to retrieve the list of contributors for the cumulated list? Or will you 
> simple return the string "we are bork" in such a case?

The latter (although the phrase "we are bork" may not be the exact error
string).

Thanks for the thorough review!

-Seb