LinuxConf Europe 2007

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Duxford Excursion (Monday)

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Kernel Summit 2007

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Arnd Bergmann

How to not invent kernel interfaces

Every piece of kernel code needs some form of user space interface. Examples for this include system calls, ioctl based character devices, virtual file systems, netlink or procfs files.

Choosing the right one is often hard and people tend to get flamed for their choices no matter what they do. The truth is that there usually is not a single right solution for a new problem, just different degrees on how wrong it gets, and coming up with a simple interface tends to be the most complicated task in any new subsystem.

This talk will explore the most common as well as some outstanding mistakes and attempt to give guidelines on how to avoid these in future projects.

Submitted paper

Paper (PDF) .