Change Details

[[ https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/eventfd.2.html | eventfd ]] is a Linux system call that produces special file descriptors for event notification. When porting Linux software, it is currently usually emulated by [[ https://github.com/jiixyj/epoll-shim | epoll-shim ]] on top of kqueues. Unfortunately, kqueues are not passable between processes! (And as noted by the author of epoll-shim, even if they were, the library state would also have to be passed somehow.) This came up when [[ https://github.com/jiixyj/epoll-shim/issues/23 | debugging strange HW video decode failures in Firefox ]]. A native implementation would avoid these problems and help with porting Linux software. Since we now already have an eventfd implementation in the kernel (for the Linuxulator), it's pretty easy to expose it natively, which is what this patch does. It's still slightly WIP (no manpages yet, and I also want to add procstat support) but I'm posting it now to get feedback on the whole thing and on `sys/eventfd.h` specifically. Notes: - eventfd_read/write one-liners are from musl libc. I didn't make them `static inline` because they're usually symbols in Linux libcs and with symbols I'm more confident that software still using epoll-shim's implementation would correctly pick the right set of functions; - `EFD_*` flags are using Linux values of `CLOEXEC` and `NONBLOCK` to avoid extra conversions on the Linuxulator side. Illumos also did it like this btw; - The reuse of `eventfd_ioctl` in Linuxulator `timerfd` is no more, there's `timerfd_ioctl` now. I'm not sure if it's a valuable reuse really.

[[ https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/eventfd.2.html | eventfd ]] is a Linux system call that produces special file descriptors for event notification. When porting Linux software, it is currently usually emulated by [[ https://github.com/jiixyj/epoll-shim | epoll-shim ]] on top of kqueues. Unfortunately, kqueues are not passable between processes! (And as noted by the author of epoll-shim, even if they were, the library state would also have to be passed somehow.) This came up when [[ https://github.com/jiixyj/epoll-shim/issues/23 | debugging strange HW video decode failures in Firefox ]]. A native implementation would avoid these problems and help with porting Linux software. Since we now already have an eventfd implementation in the kernel (for the Linuxulator), it's pretty easy to expose it natively, which is what this patch does. ~~It's still slightly WIP (no manpages yet, and I also want to add procstat support) but I'm posting it now to get feedback on the whole thing and on `sys/eventfd.h` specifically.~~ Notes: - eventfd_read/write one-liners are from musl libc. I didn't make them `static inline` because they're usually symbols in Linux libcs and with symbols I'm more confident that software still using epoll-shim's implementation would correctly pick the right set of functions; - ~~`EFD_*` flags are using Linux values of `CLOEXEC` and `NONBLOCK` to avoid extra conversions on the Linuxulator side. Illumos also did it like this btw;~~ - The reuse of `eventfd_ioctl` in Linuxulator `timerfd` is no more, there's `timerfd_ioctl` now. I'm not sure if it's a valuable reuse really.

[[ https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/eventfd.2.html | eventfd ]] is a Linux system call that produces special file descriptors for event notification. When porting Linux software, it is currently usually emulated by [[ https://github.com/jiixyj/epoll-shim | epoll-shim ]] on top of kqueues. Unfortunately, kqueues are not passable between processes! (And as noted by the author of epoll-shim, even if they were, the library state would also have to be passed somehow.) This came up when [[ https://github.com/jiixyj/epoll-shim/issues/23 | debugging strange HW video decode failures in Firefox ]]. A native implementation would avoid these problems and help with porting Linux software. Since we now already have an eventfd implementation in the kernel (for the Linuxulator), it's pretty easy to expose it natively, which is what this patch does. ~~It's still slightly WIP (no manpages yet, and I also want to add procstat support) but I'm posting it now to get feedback on the whole thing and on `sys/eventfd.h` specifically.~~ Notes: - eventfd_read/write one-liners are from musl libc. I didn't make them `static inline` because they're usually symbols in Linux libcs and with symbols I'm more confident that software still using epoll-shim's implementation would correctly pick the right set of functions; - ~~`EFD_*` flags are using Linux values of `CLOEXEC` and `NONBLOCK` to avoid extra conversions on the Linuxulator side. Illumos also did it like this btw;~~ - The reuse of `eventfd_ioctl` in Linuxulator `timerfd` is no more, there's `timerfd_ioctl` now. I'm not sure if it's a valuable reuse really.