Neither of the proposed APIs (either my multiplexed version of timerfd()
or Jon's/my idea of using three system calls (like POSIX timers), or
the notion of timerfd() integrated with POSIX timers) is more
complicated than the existing POSIX timers API.
The ABI change doesn't really matter, since timerfd() was broken in 2.6.22
anyway.
Both previous APIs provided the features I have described provide:
* the ability to fetch the old timer value when applying
a new setting
* the ability to non-destructively fetch the amount of time remaining
on a timer.
This is clearly useful for timers -- but you have not explained why
you think this is not necessary for timerfd timers.
Please -- let's do timerfd() better. Either three syscalls like:
timerfd_create()
timerfd_settime()
timer_gettime()
(the analogs of timer_create(), timer_settime(), timer_gettime()).
Or (if possible, and even better) timerfd() integrated with POSIX timers.
Then we have a good API for the coming decades. I'm prepared to help
out with patches (for what my help is worth ;-)).
Cheers,
Michael
--
Michael Kerrisk
maintainer of Linux man pages Sections 2, 3, 4, 5, and 7
Want to help with man page maintenance? Grab the latest tarball at
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/docs/manpages/
read the HOWTOHELP file and grep the source files for 'FIXME'.
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