[PATCH 1/6] docs: split extensibility section into two subsections

From: Christian Brauner
Date: Fri Sep 04 2020 - 08:27:47 EST


The section already explains two different formats that are available to
extend a syscall. Move each into its own subsection. This clarifies the
structure and will be useful when we extend each section in follow-up
patches.

Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner <christian.brauner@xxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Aleksa Sarai <cyphar@xxxxxxxxxx>
Co-developed-by: Aleksa Sarai <cyphar@xxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner <christian.brauner@xxxxxxxxxx>
---
Documentation/process/adding-syscalls.rst | 6 ++++++
1 file changed, 6 insertions(+)

diff --git a/Documentation/process/adding-syscalls.rst b/Documentation/process/adding-syscalls.rst
index 906c47f1a9e5..3853ce57e757 100644
--- a/Documentation/process/adding-syscalls.rst
+++ b/Documentation/process/adding-syscalls.rst
@@ -65,6 +65,9 @@ together with the corresponding follow-up system calls --
``pipe``/``pipe2``, ``renameat``/``renameat2`` -- so
learn from the history of the kernel and plan for extensions from the start.)

+Baseline extensibility: adding a flag argument
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
For simpler system calls that only take a couple of arguments, the preferred
way to allow for future extensibility is to include a flags argument to the
system call. To make sure that userspace programs can safely use flags
@@ -76,6 +79,9 @@ flags, and reject the system call (with ``EINVAL``) if it does::

(If no flags values are used yet, check that the flags argument is zero.)

+Advanced extensibility: extensible structs
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
For more sophisticated system calls that involve a larger number of arguments,
it's preferred to encapsulate the majority of the arguments into a structure
that is passed in by pointer. Such a structure can cope with future extension

base-commit: e49d033bddf5b565044e2abe4241353959bc9120
--
2.27.0