Overview

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