High,

I'm working with our new development team here and we are looking at how to add requests to the server. A question came up wrt encoding that I couldn't answer - I hear Pete is the expert, but anyone can pipe up.

In src/proto/pvfs2-req-proto.h when you define a new request you create a struct and then use a macro to create an encoding function for the struct (endecode_fields_X_struct). Sometimes, in the args to those macros you insert a skip4,, which I gather is used to align something. Can someone explain the rules for when and where you place this?

There is also some confusion as to the naming of those macros, in that some of them seem to count the skip4,, and some don't. In particular, if there are 3 scalar arguments, but we need one skip, we use the endecode_fields_4_struct macro - so we DO count the skip (3 args + skip = 4) but if there is an array, say 3 scalars plus an array, we use the endecode_fields_3a_struct macro - so we DO NOT count the skip. Some array macros have one, some have two skips. Any words of wisdom, or do we just have to look it up in the code?

For those who are interested, the first thing we are working on is Phil's server-to-server enabled file create. In the first step we are migrating the client create syscall functionality to the server, then we will work on implementing collective communication. Right now we are trying to figure out to what extent we can use the new state machine features to simplify that by essentially starting a client state machine on the server. Any input on that activity is encouraged.

Walt
--
Dr. Walter B. Ligon III
Associate Professor
ECE Department
Clemson University
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