[Devel] Re: [PATCH 1/2] signal checkpoint: define /proc/pid/sig/

Daniel Lezcano dlezcano at fr.ibm.com
Tue Jun 12 09:02:40 PDT 2007


Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote:
> On 11.06.2007 19:05, Serge E. Hallyn wrote:
>> Quoting Cedric Le Goater (clg at fr.ibm.com):
>>
>>> should we continue to use /proc ? or switch to some other mechanisms
>>> like getnetlink (taskstats) to map kernel structures.
>> We want to avoid 'map'ping kernel structures, though, right?  We can
>> dump the data in a more generic fashion through netlink, dunno what we
>> prefer.  But this is very definately process information :), so /proc
>> does seem appropriate.
> 
> While I agree that /proc seems appropriate, I see a few benefits of
> dumping the data through netlink:
> * Speed. IIRC there were benchmarks showing an advantage of netlink
>   over /proc when communicating with userspace. Sorry, no idea where
>   I read that.
> * Versioning. While we strive to have the perfect interface on the
>   first try, changes might be necessary. I see no way to handle
>   multiple versions of an interface in /proc without big headaches.
> * Conformity. With /proc, people often see a file, take a look at
>   it and try to infer the structure of the file from what they see.
>   This has led to multiple problems in the past when the content of
>   some files in /proc changed slightly and tools broke. With
>   netlink, implementers have to look at the spec to achieve anything
>   useful.

Right. And community seems to encourage to use the netlink and to stop 
implementing new entry in /proc.

http://kerneltrap.org/node/6637


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