Re: timerfd(2) draft man page plus questions

[Michael Kerrisk]

> > 1. timer_settime() and setitimer() both permit the caller to obtain 
> > the old value of the timer when modifying an existing timer.  Why 
> > doesn't timerfd() provide this functionality?
> 
> I don't know ;) Would it be any useful?

Well given that the two older APIs both provide this
functionality, it seems that it is desired in applications. It 
is a shame that the new API doesn't have this.  It could be 
added (I'm inclined to say, it should be): the only problem
is that the syscall is now out in the wild, so a change at
this point would not be ABI compatible.  However, it only just 
got into the wild (and hasn't made it into glibc yet), so now
would be a good time to fix it, if you are agreeable, and the
kernel gatekeepers are prepared to tolerate the ABI change.

Cheers,

Michael
-- 
Michael Kerrisk
maintainer of Linux man pages Sections 2, 3, 4, 5, and 7 

Want to help with man page maintenance?  
Grab the latest tarball at
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/docs/manpages , 
read the HOWTOHELP file and grep the source 
files for 'FIXME'.

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