Re: Opencomm: proplib-based syscall

[Iain Hibbert <plunky%rya-online.net@localhost>]

On Sun, 26 Apr 2009, Antti Kantee wrote:

> I'm still not convinced.  Actually, I'm less convinced now.  To me,
> your current argumentation pretty much reads: "add a generic interface
> which can be used for something".  Implement a useful use case and then
> you have something concrete to shut me up with.

The /dev/drvctl node could use this instead of needing a filesystem hook -
as far as I recall it is an ioctl-only node that passes plists, nothing
performance critical. Ditto for /dev/bthub which could be merged and I'm
sure there are others I don't know about.

(if drvctl(4) is a module, is not loading it the same as not providing the
device node?)

Also, I have an objection to equating PLIST with XML. A property list is a
structured container of key/value pairs and although currently the problib
library does use XML in its externalised form, its an implementation
detail and there should be no need to ever notice that it uses XML rather
than JSON or a packed binary format. Please concentrate on the contents
not the format.

As to the 'plist based syscall' it would perhaps be more useful (since
syscall numbers are not limited) to provide a generic method of passing a
plist between user and kernel space that does not require a device node
for ioctl and could be used in a syscall (some kind of plist uiomove
perhaps)

iain