preap for Linux?

[Yong Huang]

A zombie or defunct process cannot be killed. Although this "process" does not use any resource other than a process slot, there're times it's better to clean it up. Solaris provides a preap tool that does that. Does anyone know if somebody or some company is working on an equivalent for Linux? The design of Solaris preap (code at https://github.com/illumos/illumos-gate/blob/master/usr/src/cmd/ptools/preap/preap.c) seems to be modifying the process table in order to force the parent to wait() for the child. It's a clever trick. If Linux can't do it, is there any reason for that?