dbus performance information

[Simon McVittie]

On 20/03/14 18:55, LRN wrote:
> Just out of curiosity: is that feature implemented for W32? You
> speak of "UNIX", and the links you gave also mention UNIX several
> times.

No, Unix fd passing cannot work on Windows.

On most Unix platforms, file descriptors are a kernel feature, and
AF_UNIX sockets like the ones normally used in D-Bus allow file
descriptors to be passed between processes.

On Windows, file descriptors are not really an OS-level thing at all
(they are invented by an individual process's C library, which is
itself implemented in terms of the actual OS features), and OS objects
cannot be transferred over the AF_INET (TCP) sockets that D-Bus uses
on Windows. Windows doesn't have AF_UNIX sockets either.

If someone reimplemented D-Bus over Win32 named pipes or something, it
might be possible for that reimplementation to do something analogous
to fd passing (HANDLE passing?), but that reimplementation wouldn't
necessarily look much like D-Bus any more.

    S