Re: proplib and the jet age

[David Holland <dholland-tech%netbsd.org@localhost>]

On Sat, Jan 05, 2013 at 03:22:37PM +0100, Jochen Kunz wrote:
 > > > As for data transfer, the OS X answer is XPC.
 > >
 > > That is an RPC library, which is not what we're after here.
 >
 > As a RPC library it is a superset of what we're after here.

Yes and no, mostly no.

 > We are in need of an API to serialize (marshall) and deserialize
 > (unmarshall) data.

Not really. See David Young's post. What we are actually trying to do
at the API level is store arbitrary values in a dynamically-typed
collection class. The marshalling for transfer happens under the
covers.

RPC libraries are structured differently and while it might be
possible to use one to convert a proplib bundle to wire format and
back, it's not clear that there's much of anything to be gained by
doing so vs. just writing code, especially since most RPC libraries
aren't really intended to cope with dynamically typed / type-tagged
input data whose layout isn't known in advance.

-- 
David A. Holland
dholland%netbsd.org@localhost