Re: [PATCH] [1/3] Provide rdtscll() asm/msr.h for user space

From: H. Peter Anvin
Date: Tue Oct 07 2008 - 19:25:25 EST


Andi Kleen wrote:

I would suggest writing a <sys/tsc.h> header file and submitting to the glibc people, instead, or perhaps even better, start a libarch/libx86 tree.

That wouldn't work on old kernels. asm/msr.h has been the traditional interface for this and rdtsc has worked forever (at least dating back to 2.0)
rdtscll is a bit newer, but still in Linux terms ancient (2.4)


It would definitely work on older kernels. Just don't stomp on the kernel's namespace and you can do whatever you want.

Also in my experience distributions are extremly slow at keeping up
with glibc, so even if this was added to glibc it would be probably
years before it would be actually usable :/ And I see about zero
point in changing a perfectly fine include name breaking everything old.

So ship the include file with your utility. Hardly a big deal. But yes, that's part of why I'm mentioning the idea of putting it in a separate library, which can also house other low-level constructs.

Anyways if you insist I can probably deal without
but I (and likely others) would think something nasty about you every time I have to cut'n'paste that code again. Do you really want to risk that? @)

If you're really incapable of maintaining a single user-mode header file with a handful of one-liners in a sane way, then definitely.

-hpa
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