From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1757561AbcCaXgb (ORCPT ); Thu, 31 Mar 2016 19:36:31 -0400 Received: from casper.infradead.org ([85.118.1.10]:33420 "EHLO casper.infradead.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1754687AbcCaXg3 (ORCPT ); Thu, 31 Mar 2016 19:36:29 -0400 Subject: Re: New syscall: leftpad() To: Richard Weinberger , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org References: <1459463613-32473-1-git-send-email-richard@nod.at> Cc: linux-api@vger.kernel.org From: Randy Dunlap Message-ID: <56FDB478.4020609@infradead.org> Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2016 16:36:24 -0700 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:38.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/38.5.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <1459463613-32473-1-git-send-email-richard@nod.at> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Please be more careful in your description... On 03/31/16 15:33, Richard Weinberger wrote: > Recent happenings in the node.js community showed how fragile software is when > it comes to dependencies of fundamental algorithms like leftpad[1]. > A node.js package which provided ledpad vanished and broke a lot of software. leftpad > This raised our attention and we came to the conclusion that it is the kernel's > job to provide such functionality such that node.js based applications can in future > rely in Linux's "don't break userspace" rule. > We hope that glibc and Andoid's bionic will soon offer wrapper functions for this Android's > new leftpad system call. > We put leftpad into the kernel not only because of Linux's stable ABI, > also for performance reasons. > As everyone knows, within the kernel everything is faster and better. > Leftpad has millions of users, so it has to be as fast as possible. > This new system call will also help making services like left-pad.io[2] > faster and more reliable. If the leftpad() system call gets adopted by a wider user base > it might also make sense to add a generic npm() system call which acts like ioctl() > where kernel modules can register new functions that are often used by node.js. > Such functions might be, is_array(), is_int(), etc. -- ~Randy From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Randy Dunlap Subject: Re: New syscall: leftpad() Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2016 16:36:24 -0700 Message-ID: <56FDB478.4020609@infradead.org> References: <1459463613-32473-1-git-send-email-richard@nod.at> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: In-Reply-To: <1459463613-32473-1-git-send-email-richard-/L3Ra7n9ekc@public.gmane.org> Sender: linux-api-owner-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org To: Richard Weinberger , linux-kernel-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org Cc: linux-api-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org List-Id: linux-api@vger.kernel.org Please be more careful in your description... On 03/31/16 15:33, Richard Weinberger wrote: > Recent happenings in the node.js community showed how fragile software is when > it comes to dependencies of fundamental algorithms like leftpad[1]. > A node.js package which provided ledpad vanished and broke a lot of software. leftpad > This raised our attention and we came to the conclusion that it is the kernel's > job to provide such functionality such that node.js based applications can in future > rely in Linux's "don't break userspace" rule. > We hope that glibc and Andoid's bionic will soon offer wrapper functions for this Android's > new leftpad system call. > We put leftpad into the kernel not only because of Linux's stable ABI, > also for performance reasons. > As everyone knows, within the kernel everything is faster and better. > Leftpad has millions of users, so it has to be as fast as possible. > This new system call will also help making services like left-pad.io[2] > faster and more reliable. If the leftpad() system call gets adopted by a wider user base > it might also make sense to add a generic npm() system call which acts like ioctl() > where kernel modules can register new functions that are often used by node.js. > Such functions might be, is_array(), is_int(), etc. -- ~Randy