[Taniwha]

strace works on anything that makes a system call - written in any language

[amelius]

Except it doesn't work on programs that call strace.

[Retr0id]

Why not? A simple "strace strace date" works on my machine.

[amelius]

Ok, well this used to be not the case.

[Retr0id]

It's always been the case, as far as I know. You may be thinking of the fact that you can't ptrace a process that's already being ptraced, which includes processes that are ptracing themselves.

[amelius]

Doesn't strace use the ptrace() system call under the hood?

[Retr0id]

Correct, which is why I'm mentioning it here. Stracing another instance of strace does not involve any of the processes ptracing themselves, though, and I don't think it ever has.