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> That certainly ties something that makes syscalls to a narrow range of kernel versions

I don't think that's right, wouldn't it be the earliest kernel supporting that call and onwards? The Linux ABI intentionally never breaks userland.




In the case where you're running an Operating System that provides a libc and is OK with removing older syscalls, there's a beginning and an end to support.

Looking at FreeBSD under /usr/include/sys/syscall.h, there's a good number of retired syscalls.

On Linux under /usr/include/x86_64-linux-gnu/asm/unistd_32.h I see a fair number of missing numbers --- not sure what those are about, but 222, 223, 251, 285, and 387-392 are missing. (on Debian 12.1 with linux-image-6.1.0-12-amd64 version 6.1.52-1, if it matters)




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