hi there Andreas,
On Sun, Jun 02, 2002 at 06:34:29PM +0200, Andreas Jaeger wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I'm one of the glibc developers and we considered adding support for
> the *xattr syscalls to glibc.
>
> Ulrich Drepper mentioned:
> > - the various *xattr syscalls which were introduced in the 2.5 kernel
> > might need libc support. I guess they do. But somebody should contact
> > whoever wrote the code and ask them about the API which should be
> > provided.
>
> Can you tell me a bit more about the API?
The best source of info is probably the man pages - they are part
of the "attr" source package, and are also online at:
http://acl.bestbits.at/man/man.shtml
> Is it stable?
Yes, the interfaces are essentially unchanged since their initial
inclusion in 2.5.3. Marcelo has told us this will be included in
2.4.20.
> Should we define it in glibc?
I think so, yes. There is a libattr.so which also exports the system
calls, so provided the two can coexist that would be great.
> Which constants/flags should be added?
The attr package installs the header /usr/include/attr/xattr.h which
defines all the interesting macros, etc.
> Do you have some more documentation for the interface?
The attr package contains several man pages (in addition to the system
call interfaces), and AndreasG's web site also contains extra docs on
extended attributes -- http://acl.bestbits.at/.
> Is it used in other OSes and which header files define all the stuff?
There are extended attributes interfaces on other OSes, but there's no
standardisation in this area, and no two interfaces are really alike.
> ...
> Some questions: What's the meaning of the size parameter? What can be
> given for flags? What does getxattr return?
These last few questions are answered in the syscall man pages.
cheers.
--
Nathan
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