GSoC status report - #1 of 10

[Srikavin Ramkumar]

Hi,

On Mon Jun 14, 2021 at 11:14 PM EDT, Masatake YAMATO wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Interesting effort!
>
>
> How about using a script language instead of C for writing `gen` ?
>
> If we use C, the process of cross-compiling becomes a bit complicated.
> So I got the question.
>

The plan is for the generated C code to be platform-independent; that is, the
same code would be generated regardless of the host platform. The description
language has support for preprocessor directives (#include, #define, #ifdef, 
and #ifndef) that will be included directly in the generated C code to
enable/modify certain syscalls at compile time (using the target compiler).

The resulting decoders could be committed alongside changes to the underlying
system call descriptions or could be generated when running ./bootstrap. This
way, compiling the contents of maint/gen and generating decoders would happen 
before the compilation of strace.

Then, the generated code would be compiled using the same toolchain as the rest
of strace. I think this approach should avoid any cross-compilation issues, but 
let me know if you spot any potential issues.

-- Srikavin