Hey,
I am thinking about doing static analysis of file descriptor operations
in Tartan[1], and for that I need a way to identify file descriptors in
function parameters and return values (and properties and signal
parameters too).
I can think of two options for this:
1. An (fd) annotation which marks an integer as a file descriptor.
2. A new type, GFileDescriptor, defined as
typedef int GFileDescriptor
and applied to all the relevant APIs with a (type) annotation.
Both options could be used with (transfer) to indicate ownership
transfer of the FD.
I think I’m favouring option 2 because file descriptors aren’t really
integers in any of the normal senses — you can’t really do arithmetic on
them, and any comparison between them (except equality) is useless. So
as far as introspection is concerned, they shouldn’t be integers.
I’d appreciate other people’s thoughts on this. I suspect that a feature
like this could be used in bindings to automatically close open FDs when
they go out of scope. Is that done already somehow?
Philip
[1]: http://people.collabora.com/~pwith/tartan/
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part