Hi! I'm working on an idea to improve backend-frontend connection. I like the procf file system, and it would be nice, if a program could extend it. So i'm tring to make library, which emulates a virtual file system. The backend creates some virtual files. The frontend could read these files to obtain information about the running backend. For example wget would create the following files: version current-file size position url So the frontend can read these files instead of parsing the logfile, which is more complicated. And the logfile represents only one information flow The communication would be controlled by a deamon (eg. prifsd - PRocess Information File System Dameon) The backend connects to the dameon (the server) through tcp/ip (or ipc messages) The frontend connects also to the dameon. The daemon forwards the messages from the front end to the backend a daemon would also send a signal to the backend to notify about the new request (so it should not use pthreads) The backend then selects the corresponding handler (callback) function which will return the data. The data would be usually small, so it wont make network overload also the backend wouldn't be much slower.
Another idea idea would be to design a frontend-description language In a text file to describe the user interface and some minimal functionlaity (because frontend usually doesn't need to do too much things, usually just refreshing the user interface (in case of wget)) So there would be only one binary, and for each backend a simple textfile (maybe the backend could contain this file) If you think this idea is usable, or have any advice, idea about it, please mail it to me. (if you think it's a bad idea please let me know) I'm not on the mailing list, so please CC to me. Szasz Pal
