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Date: Mon, 3 Sep 2001 15:55:26 -0400
From: Christopher Faylor <cgf AT redhat DOT com>
To: cygwin-developers AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: CYGWIN SERVER: Some questions
Message-ID: <20010903155526.B2523@redhat.com>
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References: <20010903140332 DOT C23714 AT cygbert DOT vinschen DOT de> <20010903105746 DOT B2024 AT redhat DOT com> <20010903174251 DOT E30211 AT cygbert DOT vinschen DOT de>
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On Mon, Sep 03, 2001 at 05:42:51PM +0200, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
>On Mon, Sep 03, 2001 at 10:57:46AM -0400, Christopher Faylor wrote:
>> On Mon, Sep 03, 2001 at 02:03:32PM +0200, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
>> >========================================================================
>> >     FOOD FOR DISCUSSION  FOOD FOR DISCUSSION  FOOD FOR DISCUSSION  
>> >========================================================================
>> >
>> >I have some questions about our "Cygwin server project" which is
>> >about to start as soon as we have discussed how to implement
>> >the client/server protocol and how to manage differences between
>> >NT and 9x based OSes.
>> >
>> >The most important question IMO is, how do we design the communication
>> >protocol? It should combine all qualities which can't live together in
>> >reality but only on marketing papers:
>> >
>> >1. Platform independent (from a Wincentric point of view, 9x/NT)
>> >2. Fast
>> >3. Reliable
>> >4. Secure
>> >5. Easy to use
>> >6. Expandable
>> >
>> >What did we found to date? We already discussed the transport layer
>> >back in June but we have no result so far. Possible transport layers
>> >are:
>> >
>> >- Sockets (Pro: Platform independent, Easy to use, Con: Secure)
>> >- Shared memory (Pro: Platform independent, Fast, Con: Secure)
>> >- Named pipes (Pro: Secure, Con: Platform independent)
>> >- DDE (Pro: Platform independent, Secure, Con: Easy to use???)
>> >- RPC (Pro: Platform independent, Secure, Con: Easy to use???)
>> >- COM (Pro: Platform independent, Con: Easy to use???)
>> 
>> How about mailboxes as the communication mechanism?  They share many
>> of the characteristics of named pipes, I believe but *I think* they
>> work on Windows 95.
>
>I'm not quite sure about the seriousness of this mail but if you
>refer to mailslots... they are just a one-way mechanism to push
>some data to another process. No real `communication' at all.

Oops.  Yes, I meant mail slots.  They are one directional, but so are
pipes.  You just open one mail slot for each direction.  Or, you use it
to synchronize a shared memory region.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/ipc/hh/winbase/mailslot_8feb.asp

cgf