Show threadraichooMay 9, 2020
@xanderio That sounds like a bad design choice in terms of portability in general…
Show thread0mp at FreeBSDMay 9, 2020
@raichoo @xanderio Uh, if I recall correctly, #procfs is not going to be available in #FreeBSD 13.0.
Show threadxanderio
@mpts @raichoo What a about #linprocfs?
May 9, 2020 at 10:13amWeb
Show thread0mp at FreeBSDMay 9, 2020
@xanderio @raichoo #linprocfs is here to stay AFAIK, but #procfs is going away. I cannot find the exact commit at the moment, but I found this: https://reviews.freebsd.org/D24254
⚙ D24254 Mark devel/strace as broken on 13.0 and later.

Show threadraichooMay 9, 2020
@mpts @xanderio Urg… seriously the Linux procfs is stuff of nightmares :( I really don't like the concept of `/proc` that much to begin with but at least the FreeBSD one was kind of bearable since it somewhat resembled what I knew from Solaris.
Show thread0mp at FreeBSDMay 9, 2020
@raichoo @xanderio Ha, well, it sounds pretty cool to be able to just treat everything as a file. I've not played with it too much, so I don't have any strong opinions really. Why don't you like the concept of /proc?
Show threadraichooMay 9, 2020
@mpts @xanderio The "everything is a file"-approach was hasn't been true in Unix for ages. I'd rather have well defined interfaces like sysctl that I can call from my programs better than reading in a file and start parsing it. It sounds nice as a concepts but given that you are basically adding a parsing layer to get to the data instead of reading out a sysctl directly is not very appealing to me. It introduces more surface for bugs.
Show threadraichooMay 9, 2020
@mpts @xanderio And the Linux procfs is a very special animal. They have basically crammed everything into it that wasn't able to run away fast enough and now they are stuck with it because they don't want to break user space. Linux procfs to me is the Unix equivalent to Windows registry, only worse.
Show threadraichooMay 9, 2020
@mpts @xanderio IT ME! GRUMPY UNIX DUDE!
Show thread0mp at FreeBSDMay 9, 2020
@raichoo @xanderio Thanks! It reminds me of "What UNIX Cost Us" - Benno Rice (LCA 2020)
Show threadraichooMay 9, 2020
@mpts @xanderio Indeed. Unix is a double edged sword. On one hand you have a lot of history where people worked hard on getting things right, on the other hand we have painted ourselves into a corner in some very bad places.