Linux has timerfd, signalfd and eventfd. Is it time for a "unionfd"?

[Yann Droneaud]

Hi,

Le mardi 05 janvier 2021 à 17:13 -0800, Joe Doe a écrit :
> One of the architectures that Linux applications use, is to run in a
> loop that watches a number of FDs (e.g. epoll()) and react to the
> events from those FDs.
> 
> Now let's say I am writing a communication library that users can use
> to send and receive messages to other processes over the network. And
> let's assume that for reasons, my library is using multiple
> connections internally.
> 
> I have no way to construct my library in such a way that it will only
> export a single FD to the user, and hide the rest of the internal
> connections. I will either have to expose all the FDs, making it more
> difficult for the user, or I would have to run the library code in a
> different thread, and use eventfd to make the interface simpler.
> 
> Having a "UnionFD" that would get triggered when one of my other FDs
> is ready for I/O would solve the problem.
> 

It's already here, epollfd_create1() returns a file descriptor that can
be polled.


> For example an API of the hypothetical library with the tools we have
> today might look something like this:
> 
> int comm_lib_init(void); // Returns the "master" FD
> int comm_lib_accept(int master_fd); // Returns an FD when a new
> connection is accepted
> int comm_lib_send_message(int master_fd, const char *dest, void
> *data,
> size_t data_len); // If a new connection was required to send this
> message, then it will return the FD
> int comm_lib_recv_message(int master_fd, ...);
> 
> The user of the library would have to do the bookkeeping for all the
> FDs that are returned by the above APIs themself.
> 
> Instead with a "UnionFD", the API would only ever return a single FD
> and the user would call `comm_lib_send_message` and
> `comm_lib_recv_message` with this FD.
> 
> E.g. the application's code would look something like that:
> 
> comm_fd = comm_lib_init();
> epollfd = poll_create1(0);
> 
> ev.events = EPOLLIN;
> ev.data.fd = comm_fd;
> epoll_ctl(epollfd, EPOLL_CTL_ADD, comm_fd, &ev);
> for (;;) {
>      fds = epoll_wait(epollfd, events, MAX_EVENTS, -1);
> }
> 
> Once in the loop, the user doesn't have to worry about FD bookkeeping
> anymore.
> 
> Another example would be a much simpler HTTP library. The library
> would just return a single "master_fd" that the user would plug in
> their epoll() and just call something like `get_next_request()` when
> the FD gets triggered. That way we could easily add this HTTP server
> to an epoll() loop that monitors other FDs as well. No more worrying
> about accept(), and per-connection FD bookkeeping.
> 
> I believe a construct like this would help some popular existing
> libraries as well, like zeromq and the grpc library.
> 
> Does the above make sense? Or is there already a way to achieve that
> in Linux that I am not aware of?
> 
> Thanks,
> 

Regards.

-- 
Yann Droneaud
OPTEYA