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Although there is no standard (POSIX or other) for the layout of the `/proc`
pseudo-filesystem, it turned out a very useful facility in GNU/Linux and other
systems, and many tools concerned with process management use it. (`ps`, `top`,
`htop`, `gtop`, `killall`, `pkill`, ...)

Instead of porting all these tools to use [[libps]] (Hurd's official method for
accessing process information), they run out of the box, via the
Hurd's Linux-compatible `procfs` at `/proc`.  (On Linux, the
`/proc` filesystem is used also for debugging purposes; but this is
highly system-specific anyways, so there is probably no point in
trying to duplicate this functionality as well...)

# History of procfs

There was an implementation in [[open_issues/HurdExtras]],
<http://www.nongnu.org/hurdextras/#procfs>.

Madhusudan.C.S has implemented a new, fully functional [[procfs|madhusudancs]] for
[[GSoC 2008|community/gsoc/2008]].

In August 2010, Jérémie Koenig [published another, new
version](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2010-08/msg00165.html).
This can be found in <https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/hurd/procfs.git/>.

Testing it is as simple as this:

    $ git clone git://git.savannah.gnu.org/hurd/procfs.git
    $ cd procfs/
    $ make
    $ settrans -ca proc procfs --compatible
    $ ls -l proc/

[[Open issues|jkoenig/discussion]].