From owner-cvs-all Wed Dec 30 13:59:10 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id NAA05798 for cvs-all-outgoing; Wed, 30 Dec 1998 13:59:10 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-cvs-all@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from firewall.reed.wattle.id.au (darren2.lnk.telstra.net [139.130.53.33]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id NAA05793 for ; Wed, 30 Dec 1998 13:59:07 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from darrenr@reed.wattle.id.au) Received: (from root@localhost) by firewall.reed.wattle.id.au (8.9.1/8.8.7) id VAA27349; Wed, 30 Dec 1998 21:58:45 GMT Received: from avalon.reed.wattle.id.au(192.168.1.1) by firewall.reed.wattle.id.au via smap (V1.3) id sma027347; Wed Dec 30 21:58:23 1998 Received: from percival.reed.wattle.id.au. (percival.reed.wattle.id.au [192.168.1.5]) by avalon.reed.wattle.id.au (8.9.0.Beta3/8.9.0.Beta3) with SMTP id IAA18737; Thu, 31 Dec 1998 08:58:22 +1100 (EST) From: Darren Reed Message-Id: <199812302158.IAA18737@avalon.reed.wattle.id.au> Subject: Re: kvm_nlist emulation of n_type from kld symbol table at runtime. To: phk@critter.freebsd.dk (Poul-Henning Kamp) Date: Thu, 31 Dec 1998 08:58:21 +1100 (EST) Cc: mike@smith.net.au, committers@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: <91478.915047292@critter.freebsd.dk> from "Poul-Henning Kamp" at Dec 30, 98 08:48:12 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Content-Type: text Sender: owner-cvs-all@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk In some email I received from Poul-Henning Kamp, sie wrote: > > In message <199812301938.LAA04955@dingo.cdrom.com>, Mike Smith writes: > > > >> Nutshell: Can anybody forsee the need to export symbol type to userland? > >> > >No, the obvious solution is to improve and expand the sysctl interface, > >which already provides size and type information. > > It would be trivial to implement in a sysctl, and we can even do it > as > sysctl kern.nlist.val.avenrun > sysctl kern.nlist.type.avenrun > if you want to... I'd just like to point out that, if people haven't already noticed, that relying on sysctl alone to provide this sort of interface does not help anybody and creates more work for porting regular applications to FreeBSD. Sure, provide a sysctl interface by all means, but if you are going to support exporting the internal symbol table to user programs then IMHO doing so in a manner which is already widely supported is essential. Then again, I won't be coding it, just expecting tools such as nm, gdb, or anything else which uses the nlist() library function to just work as if the sysctl interface was a regular file with a symbol table. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe cvs-all" in the body of the message