Introducing utrace

Posted Mar 8, 2007 14:52 UTC (Thu) by dw (subscriber, #12017)
Parent article: Introducing utrace

Does this not go against the Linux philosophy of not having unnecessary* layers of abstraction present in the kernel? I seem to remember not so long ago this being used as a (reason|excuse) for a device driver not being included in mainline.

* This layer, I believe from my limited perspective, isn't "necessary", right?

Introducing utrace

Posted Mar 17, 2007 18:29 UTC (Sat) by dmag (guest, #17775) [Link]

You're thinking of HALs. Vendors writing device drivers often introduce a Hardware Abstraction Layer so that their driver can work on any OS just by writing a new HAL. That simplifies life for the vendor, but complicates each individual OS driver.

In fact, just like cross-platform GUIs, HALs usually end up being "lowest common denominator". Therefore, the driver isn't likely to use Linux the most effecient way. It also makes it harder for the kernel maintainers: You have to take time to understand each new HAL, instead of just knowing the existing driver APIs.

utrace is more of a plug-in mechanisim than a new layer.