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dicey

Dicey is a WIP library that strives to provide an easy yet extensible way to implement 1:N IPC between a central application and multiple observer processes.

Dicey allows applications to expose a fast, asynchronous entry point to a set of well-defined objects, over either UDS or named pipes (Windows).

Supported platforms

Dicey is written in strict C11 with little to no extensions, and has been tested on the following configurations:

  • GNU/Linux x86_64
  • GNU/Linux AArch64
  • macOS AArch64
  • FreeBSD x86_64
  • Windows x86_64

Building

In order to build Dicey, you need:

  • a recent C11-compliant compiler. The code has been thourougly tested with GCC 12+, Clang 15+ and CL 19.38+ (MSVC 2022)
  • a recent version of CMake - at least 3.26
  • (optional) Ninja, for presets.

If you have ninja installed, you can use one of the many pre-defined presets to build Dicey:

$ cmake --list-presets
Available configure presets:

  "debug"                                - Debug (shared)
  "debug-vendored"                       - Debug (shared, with vendored libraries)
  "debug-static"                         - Debug (static)
  "debug-static-vendored"                - Debug (static, with vendored libraries)
  "debug-min"                            - Debug (shared, no samples)
  "debug-min-vendored"                   - Debug (shared, no samples, with vendored libraries)
  "debug-min-static"                     - Debug (static, no samples)
  "debug-min-static-vendored"            - Debug (static, no samples, with vendored libraries)
  "debug-gcc"                            - Debug (shared, with GCC)
  "debug-gcc-analyzer"                   - Debug (shared, with GCC, with GCC Static analyzer)
  "debug-llvm-unix"                      - Debug (shared, with LLVM)
  "debug-llvm-fuzzer"                    - Debug (shared, with LLVM, with libFuzzer sample)
  "debug-llvm-asan"                      - Debug (shared, with LLVM, with AddressSanitizer)
  "debug-llvm-msan"                      - Debug (shared, with LLVM, with MemorySanitizer)
  "debug-llvm-tsan"                      - Debug (shared, with LLVM, with ThreadSanitizer)
  "debug-llvm-ubsan"                     - Debug (shared, with LLVM, with UndefinedBehaviorSanitizer)
  "release"                              - Release (shared)
  "release-vendored"                     - Release (shared, with vendored libraries)
  "release-with-samples"                 - Release (shared, with samples)
  "release-with-samples-vendored"        - Release (shared, with samples, with vendored libraries)
  "release-static"                       - Release (static)
  "release-static-vendored"              - Release (static, with vendored libraries)
  "release-static-with-samples"          - Release (static, with samples)
  "release-static-with-samples-vendored" - Release (static, with samples, with vendored libraries)
  "release-gcc"                          - Release (shared, with GCC)
  "release-llvm-unix"                    - Release (shared, with LLVM)

If you just want to test the library, build a debug static version:

$ cmake --preset debug-static
$ cmake --build --preset debug-static

This will build all libraries as static libraries and all samples.

More info about how to build different builds, including for release, will come in due time.

Using the samples

samples contains several useful tools that can be used to test Dicey. In particular, after building with BUILD_SAMPLES=ON (i.e., a debug config or a with-samples release preset) you should find the following sample executables under <buildir>/samples:

  • load: loads a Dicey packet from either a binary representation or an XML representation, following the schema defined at schemas/packet.xsd. Prints a full textual representation of the packet on stdout. You can use load to compile XML files to binary using the -o parameter:

    $ build/samples/load -o packet.bin schemas/packet.xml
$ build/samples/load packet.bin
#0 = message {
  kind = SET
  path = "/foo/bar"
  selector = (a.street.trait.named.Bob:Bobbable)
  value = tuple(
      [0] = array[bool]{
          [0] = bool:true
          [1] = bool:false
      }
      [1] = bool:true
      [2] = array[float]{
          [0] = float:3.140000
          [1] = float:2.718000
      }
      [3] = error:(code = 10)
      [4] = error:(code = 20, message = "Oh no!")
      [5] = byte:88
      [6] = unit:()
      [7] = pair{
          first = str:"key"
          second = array[tuple]{
              [0] = tuple(
                  [0] = i32:1
                  [1] = i32:-2
              )
              [1] = tuple(
                  [0] = str:"foo"
                  [1] = str:"bar"
                  [2] = bytes:[ 62 61 73 65 36 34 ] (6 bytes)
              )
          }
      }
  )
}

  • server: a simple server for Dicey. Run it as server with no arguments. It will listen on a pre-defined socket or named pipe, whose name will be printed on stdout:

    $  build/samples/server
  starting Dicey sample server on @/tmp/.uvsock...

    You can stop the server with Ctrl-C, or by performing EXEC /dicey/sample_server#dicey.sample.Server:Halt with signature (u) -> u.

    The server will print all incoming messages on stdout, and errors on stderr.

  • sval: a simple client for the sval.Sval service exposed by server. Run it as

    $ sval SOCKETPATH
/sval#sval.Sval:Value = "hello"

    to perform a simple GET operation on the /sval#sval.Sval:Value string property, or

    $ sval SOCKETPATH "world"

    to perform a SET instead, with the given string.

    SOCKETPATH is the name of either an UDS or a Windows named pipe. On Linux, you can specify an abstract socket using the @ notation, like @/tmp/.uvsock.

Alongside these samples, you will find the following internal tools which may looks somewhat cryptic, but are good references for how to perform more complex tasks with libdicey:

  • client: a simple client for Dicey which sends an arbitrarily complex payload. Run it as client SOCKETPATH PAYLOAD, where SOCKETPATH is the name of either an UDS or a Windows named pipe. PAYLOAD can can be either a binary payload or an XML file.

  • dump: generates a sample (builtin for now) payload to a file, or prints it on stdout as hex.

  • base64: a clone of the classic UNIX base64 utility. It can encode and decode base64 payloads.

  • inspect: uses Dicey introspection to inspect objects on a server. Run it as inspect SOCKET PATH.

Licence

Dicey is licenced under the terms of the Apache License 2.0. See LICENSE for more info.