James Carlson wrote:
> Joseph Balenzano writes:
>
>> According to /etc/name_to_sysnum and syscall.h sytem calls 64 - 69 are
>> reserved. Are they actually in use or just marked reserve for future
>> development?
>>
>
> It looks to me like they were reserved _long_ ago by AT&T for
> something called "UNIX PC," but never used. They predate Solaris.
>
> I have no idea if they were ever used ... but why would this matter?
> The syscall interface is private to the ON consolidation. The numbers
> in use aren't documented, and may change at any time. In particular,
> if you compile these into an application and generate your own system
> calls, your application may stop working at any time, without notice,
> even in a patch.
>
> Unless you're integrating something into ON via OpenSolaris, you
> probably shouldn't be relying on these.
>
There is something called the SYSV ABI, which I believe specified even
the system call interface (and this predates, I believe, the widespread
use of shared libraries). I'm not sure anyone cares about the SYSV ABI
anymore, but the idea was that 3rd party applications compiled to the
SYSV ABI would keep working.
These days, the interface guarantees are made at the app/library
interface boundary, rather than the user/kernel boundary. And
compatibility with Solaris is probably more interesting to most people
than SYSV compatibility. I'm not even sure we are still SYSV ABI
compliant. Anyone else know?
-- Garrett
_______________________________________________
opensolaris-code mailing list
[email protected]
http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/opensolaris-code
