Re: "new" word

[Lutz Donnerhacke <lutz@iks-jena.de>]

* Florian Weimer wrote:
> * Adrian Knoth:
>> Another way would be to specify the Kernel-ABI, but I don't expect
>> this to happen earlier than Hurd ;)
>
> The kernel ABI is fairly stable.  There are only a few dozen syscalls,
> and it's easy to write Ada wrappers for them.

IBTD.
The parameters of the syscalls are usually C-header-file defined structures.
The memory layout of those structures are hard to determine.
BTDT.

> It doesn't buy you that much because large parts of the GNAT run-time
> on GNU systems rely on services provided by the C run-time library.

It uses a C-written wrapper for those bindings.
So GNAT does not know the ABI but obtain it from the C compiler.

> Duplicating this infrastructure is the hard work, and doing it right even
> for older kernels is quite a challenge.

Of course, but the job is hard, because there is no defined way to derive
the correct interface portable. The reason why is simple: There is no
portable interface beside C-header files.