ptrace & Re: Mark Williams csd

[Guy Harris]

> Actually, V8's "/proc" (a directory all of whose files actually refer to
> system processes; open the file and reads and writes act on that process'
> address space) seems like a much cleaner solution to the nasty
> efficiency problems of ptrace, and it too is compatible.

Well, *some* of the problems.  V8 is based on 4.1BSD, so it assumes you
have virtual memory available.  If, on a machine which doesn't support
virtual memory or partial loading of processes, process A is debugging
process B, and process A and process B don't both fit into main memory,
"/proc" and "ptrace" are both going to be horribly inefficient.  I don't
know how much V8's implementation of reads and writes on a process' address
space depends on the kernel supporting virtual memory.

I do agree that, if implementable, "/proc" is 1000% the right way to do
things.

	Guy Harris
	{seismo,ihnp4,allegra}!rlgvax!guy