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.

The way this works under the hood is that during serialization and deserialization encountered file descriptors are tracked. They are then sent over the unix socket separately. This lets unassociated processes share file handles.

If you only want the unix socket abstraction you can disable all default features and use the raw channels.

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();
}

License: MIT/Apache-2.0