Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2018 11:01:04 -0600 From: Alan Somers <asomers@freebsd.org> To: FreeBSD Hackers <freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org>, bde@freebsd.org, Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@phk.freebsd.dk> Subject: Is it time to expose timespecsub and friends to userland? Message-ID: <CAOtMX2h03kM36ocyPut__yf-S0Ry2_sOkQCHeFb1GZ4K8NM1Fg@mail.gmail.com>
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There are at least 19 system calls that have timeout arguments specified as struct timespec [1]. "struct stat" describes file timestamps as timespecs as well [2]. setsockopt(2), sched_rr_get_interval(2), geom_stats_snapshot_timestamp(3) and pmclog_read(3) use timespecs for other purposes. The sysctl node kern.crypto_stats exposes timespecs. sudo records timespecs in its timestamp files. Who know how many other ports do something similar; I'm not going to grep them all. And yet, FreeBSD provides no way to manipulate this structure. Every program that uses them has to roll its own version of pretty much the same functions. NetBSD does [3], and has for a long time. In fact, NetBSD's timespecsub is old enough to drink [4]. But in FreeBSD, those functions languish inside of an "#ifdef KERNEL". phk added them in r35029 with the comment "XXX: These may change!". But it's been nearly 20 years, so I don't think they're going to change any more. Shall we finally expose them to userland and add a man page? Let the bikeshed begin! If the flame isn't too bad, I'll do it. -Alan [1] syscalls that use timespec timeouts include: aio_suspend(2), aio_waitcomplete(2), nanosleep(2), clock_nanosleep(2), kevent(2), mq_timedreceive(2), mq_timedsend(2), ppoll(2), pselect(2), recvmmsg(2), sigtimedwait(2), thr_suspend(2), cnd_timedwait(3), mtx_timedlock(3), thrd_sleep(3), pthread_mutex_timedlock(3), pthread_cond_timedwait(3), sem_timedwait(3), sem_clockwait_np(3). [2] syscalls that use timespecs for file timestamp related purposes: stat(2), fstat(2), futimens(2), utimensat(2), lstat(2) [3] http://netbsd.gw.com/cgi-bin/man-cgi?timespecclear+3+NetBSD-7.0 [4] http://cvsweb.netbsd.org/bsdweb.cgi/src/sys/sys/time.h.diff?r1=1.19&r2=1.20&only_with_tag=MAIN&f=h
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