unix-ipc

This crate implements a minimal abstraction over UNIX domain sockets for the purpose of IPC. It lets you send both file handles and rust objects between processes.

How it works

This uses serde to serialize data over unix sockets via bincode. Thanks to the Handle abstraction you can also send any object across that is convertable into a unix file handle.

Example

use std::env;
use std::process;
use unix_ipc::{channel, Bootstrapper, Receiver, Sender};
use serde::{Deserialize, Serialize};

const ENV_VAR: &str = "PROC_CONNECT_TO";

#[derive(Serialize, Deserialize, Debug)]
pub enum Task {
    Sum(Vec<i64>, Sender<i64>),
    Shutdown,
}

if let Ok(path) = env::var(ENV_VAR) {
    let receiver = Receiver::<Task>::connect(path).unwrap();
    loop {
        match receiver.recv().unwrap() {
            Task::Sum(values, tx) => {
                tx.send(values.into_iter().sum::<i64>()).unwrap();
            }
            Task::Shutdown => break,
        }
    }
} else {
    let bootstrapper = Bootstrapper::new().unwrap();
    let mut child = process::Command::new(env::current_exe().unwrap())
        .env(ENV_VAR, bootstrapper.path())
        .spawn()
        .unwrap();

    let (tx, rx) = channel().unwrap();
    bootstrapper.send(Task::Sum(vec![23, 42], tx)).unwrap();
    println!("sum: {}", rx.recv().unwrap());
    bootstrapper.send(Task::Shutdown).unwrap();
}

Feature Flags

All features are enabled by default but a lot can be turned off to cut down on dependencies. With all default features enabled only the raw types are available.

• serde: enables serialization and deserialization.
• bootstrap: adds the Bootstrapper type.
• bootstrap-simple: adds the default new constructor to the bootstrapper.

License: MIT/Apache-2.0