5 Aug
2014
5 Aug
'14
4:23 a.m.
On Mon, Aug 04, 2014 at 05:24:39PM -0500, A. P. Garcia wrote:
We in Solaris designed /proc as a tool for developers
to build innovative
solutions, not an end-user interface. The Linux community believes that
'cat /proc/self/maps' is the best user interface, while we believe that
pmap(1) is right answer. The reason for this is that mdb(1), truss(1),
dtrace(1M) and a host of other tools all make use of this same information.
It would be a waste of time to take binary information in the kernel,
convert it to text, and then have the userland components all write their
own (error prone) parsing routines to convert this information back into a
custom binary form. Plus, we can change the options and output format of
pmap without breaking other applications that depend on the contents of
/proc.
I come from SunOS background and have had more than a few /proc discussions
with Roger Faulkner (who I believed did the System V /proc at Bell Labs?).
I get the arguments above but I don't buy 'em. linux really got /proc
right in terms of usefulness. Digging binary blobs out of the kernel
and translating them sucks. I've done, I've written kmem drivers for
ps, I understand how it works. I far prefer the pure ascii model that
Linux has.
I also get that Linux turned /proc into /whatever/I/think/I/need/today
and that makes purists grit their teeth. None the less, if you give
me a choice I'll take the linux way. Want to see what files you have
open?
ls -l /proc/$$/fd
Etc. Really easy to poke around and figure stuff out as needed and no
rats nest of header files to decode the structures.
--lm