this commit shuffles around the location of syscall definitions so
that we can make a syscall() library function with both SYS_* and
__NR_* style syscall names available to user applications, provides
the syscall() library function, and optimizes the code that performs
the actual inline syscalls in the library itself.
previously on i386 when built as PIC (shared library), syscalls were
incurring bus lock (lock prefix) overhead at entry and exit, due to
the way the ebx register was being loaded (xchg instruction with a
memory operand). now the xchg takes place between two registers.
further cleanup to arch/$(ARCH)/syscall.h is planned.
only the structures, not the functions from ucontext.h, are supported
at this point. the main goal of this commit is to make modern gcc with
dwarf2 unwinding build without errors.
honestly, it probably doesn't matter how we define these as long as
they have members with the right names to prevent errors while
compiling libgcc. the only time they will be used is for propagating
exceptions across signal-handler boundaries, which invokes undefined
behavior anyway. but as-is, they're probably correct and may be useful
to various low-level applications dealing with virtualization, jit
code generation, and so on...
this allows sys/types.h to provide the pthread types, as required by
POSIX. this design also facilitates forcing ABI-compatible sizes in
the arch-specific alltypes.h, while eliminating the need for
developers changing the internals of the pthread types to poke around
with arch-specific headers they may not be able to test.
this was originally written for an early draft of the library where
non-standard functions would reside in a static library separate from
the shared libc.so, which would implement a pure standard. the idea
was not to depend on an implementation-dependent __syscall_ret
function in the main libc. but it turned out to be better to put
everything in a single library for both static and dynamic linking
uses, and thus the (incomplete) remnants of this feature were just
enlarging the source and binary.
Rich Felker
Nicholas J. Kain