Re: Rumpification (was Re: CVS commit: src/usr.sbin/envstat)

[Jukka Ruohonen <jruohonen%iki.fi@localhost>]

On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 08:07:27PM +0200, Antti Kantee wrote:
> I'd love to.  To establish some common ground, can you familiarize
> yourself with the material I've written, starting from
> 
> http://www.netbsd.org/docs/rump/

This is all dandy. But how does this all fit together from a perspective of
normal userland programming?

For instance, if I have to modify a program X in /sbin, what system calls
should go through rump?  All those in <rump/rump_syscall.h>?  If not all,
how do I make the distinction?  Why 'ping.c' now contains prog_setsockopt()
but not prog_gettimeofday()? Will I now break something if I accidentally
use normal system calls instead? If I want to write a new program, should I
always use these prog_*() wrappers?  What practices should I follow with the
prog_ops structure? Should prog_init() be always called?  What should I put
in Makefiles?

I know very well how to write normal UNIX programs and I've done something
with rump(3) too, but breaking decades old practices always induces a
whole lot of practical questions.

- Jukka.