The Likewise message library (LWMsg
) is a data serialization and transmission system designed for the following scenarios:
- Local interprocess communication using plain C data structures and procedure call semantics
- Serialization of data structures to disk for long-term storage
The library has been designed as a series of foundational layers:
- A type specification system for describing the layout of C data structures and binding sets of these structures into protocol descriptions
- A data model for converting data structures to and from a flat representation
- An association system which encapsulates the notion of stateful, full-duplex, message-oriented communication channels between peers
- A call discipline which supports synchronous and asynchronous procedure calls
On top of this foundation are concrete services for use by client applications:
- Associations that send and receive messages over UNIX domain sockets
- Generic, multi-threaded client and server implementations for remote procedure calls
- Archive files, a mechanism for persisting data structures to disk