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/cvs/IO-FDPass/FDPass.pm
Revision: 1.4
Committed: Fri Apr 5 08:20:36 2013 UTC (11 years, 1 month ago) by root
Branch: MAIN
CVS Tags: rel-0_2
Changes since 1.3: +6 -6 lines
Log Message:
0.2

File Contents

# Content
1 =head1 NAME
2
3 IO::FDPass - pass a file descriptor over a socket
4
5 =head1 SYNOPSIS
6
7 use IO::FDPass;
8
9 =head1 DESCRIPTION
10
11 This small low-level module only has one purpose: pass a file descriptor
12 to another process, using a (streaming) unix domain socket (on POSIX
13 systems) or any (streaming) socket (on WIN32 systems).
14
15 =head1 FUNCTIONS
16
17 =over 4
18
19 =cut
20
21 package IO::FDPass;
22
23 BEGIN {
24 $VERSION = 0.2;
25
26 require XSLoader;
27 XSLoader::load (__PACKAGE__, $VERSION);
28 }
29
30 =item $bool = IO::FDPass::send $socket_fd, $fd_to_pass
31
32 Sends the file descriptor given by C<$fd_to_pass> over the socket
33 C<$socket_fd>. Return true if it worked, false otherwise.
34
35 Note that I<both> parameters must be file descriptors, not handles.
36
37 When used on non-blocking sockets, this function might fail with C<$!>
38 set to C<EAGAIN> or equivalent, in which case you are free to try. It
39 should succeed if called on a socket that indicates writability (e.g. via
40 C<select>).
41
42 Example: pass a file handle over an open socket.
43
44 IO::FDPass::send fileno $socket, fileno $fh
45 or die "unable to pass file handle: $!";
46
47 =item $fd = IO::FDPass::recv $socket_fd
48
49 Receive a file descriptor from the socket and return it if successful. On
50 errors, return C<-1>.
51
52 Note that I<both> C<$socket_fd> amd the returned file descriptor are, in
53 fact, file descriptors, not handles.
54
55 When used on non-blocking sockets, this function might fail with C<$!>
56 set to C<EAGAIN> or equivalent, in which case you are free to try. It
57 should succeed if called on a socket that indicates readability (e.g. via
58 C<select>).
59
60 Example: receive a file desriptor from a blockign socket and convetr it to
61 a file handle.
62
63 my $fd = IO::FDPass::recv fileno $socket;
64 $fd >= 0 or die "unable to receive file handle: $!";
65 open my $fh, "+<&=$fd"
66 or die "unable to convert file descriptor to handle: $!";
67
68 =back
69
70 =head1 PORTABILITY NOTES
71
72 This module has been tested on GNU/Linux x86 and amd64, NetBSD 6, OS X
73 10.5, Windows 2000 ActivePerl 5.10, Solaris 10, OpenBSD 4.4, 4.5, 4.8 and
74 5.0, DragonFly BSD, FreeBSD 7, 8 and 9, Windows 7 + ActivePerl 5.16.3 32
75 and 64 bit and Strawberry Perl 5.16.3 32 and 64 bit, and found to work,
76 although ActivePerl 32 bit needed a newer MinGW version (that supports XP
77 and higher).
78
79 However, windows doesn't support asynchronous file descriptor passing, so
80 the source process must still be around when the destination process wants
81 to receive the file handle. Also, if the target process fails to fetch the
82 handle, the handle will leak, so never do that.
83
84 Also, on windows, the receiving process must have the PROCESS_DUP_HANDLE
85 access right on the sender process for this module to work.
86
87 Cygwin is not supported at the moment, as file descriptor passing in
88 cygwin is not supported, and cannot be rolled on your own as cygwin has no
89 (working) method of opening a handle as fd. That is, it has one, but that
90 one isn't exposed to programs, and only used for stdin/out/err. Sigh.
91
92 =head1 OTHER MODULES
93
94 At the time of this writing, the author of this module was aware of two
95 other file descriptor passing modules on CPAN: L<Linux::FDPasser> and
96 L<AnyEvent::FDPasser>.
97
98 The former hasn't seen any release for over a decade, isn't 64 bit clean
99 and it's author didn't respond to my mail with the fix. It does, however,
100 support a snumber of pre-standard unices.
101
102 The latter seems to have similar support for antique unices, and doesn't
103 seem to suffer from 64 bit bugs, but inexplicably has a large perl part,
104 and requires AnyEvent. Presumably that makes it much more user friendly
105 than this module.
106
107 Neither seems to support native win32 perls.
108
109 =head1 AUTHOR
110
111 Marc Lehmann <schmorp@schmorp.de>
112 http://home.schmorp.de/
113
114 =cut
115
116 1
117