such archs are expected to omit definitions of the SYS_* macros for
syscalls their kernels lack from arch/$ARCH/bits/syscall.h. the
preprocessor is then able to select the an appropriate implementation
for affected functions. two basic strategies are used on a
case-by-case basis:
where the old syscalls correspond to deprecated library-level
functions, the deprecated functions have been converted to wrappers
for the modern function, and the modern function has fallback code
(omitted at the preprocessor level on new archs) to make use of the
old syscalls if the new syscall fails with ENOSYS. this also improves
functionality on older kernels and eliminates the incentive to program
with deprecated library-level functions for the sake of compatibility
with older kernels.
in other situations where the old syscalls correspond to library-level
functions which are not deprecated but merely lack some new features,
such as the *at functions, the old syscalls are still used on archs
which support them. this may change at some point in the future if or
when fallback code is added to the new functions to make them usable
(possibly with reduced functionality) on old kernels.
the old code could be kept for cases where SYS_utime is available, but
it's not really worth the ifdef ugliness. and better to avoid
deprecated stuff just in case the kernel devs ever get crazy enough to
start removing it from archs where it was part of the ABI and breaking
static bins...
Rich Felker