In article <199701190948.BAA22798@lestat.nas.nasa.gov> you write:
> ...so... This came up with the MIPS some time ago...
> 
> If someone would like to draw up a design (and implementation :-) of
> a cache manipulation API for userland, I think its someting that
> ought to be in the tree...

It already is on some platforms, sort of. I remembered something about
cache coherency and ld.so back when the '040 support was being added to
the Amiga port, and sure enough, there it was. m68k and ns32k have
_cachectl() pseudo-syscalls, used only by (and defined only in) the ld
sources. So, if a real API is implemented, someone needs to
remember to update the linker appropriately. There will need to be
backward compatibility for the old traps, too.