Re: how to get a SOCKET from a source

[Tor Lillqvist <tml iki fi>]

Diego Zuccato writes:
 > Is there a reason that makes useful to have two distinct calls for
 > different platforms instead of a single g_io_channel_get_fd() that works
 > across platforms?

When the GIOChannel API was designed, it was not yet known to what
extent it would be similar across platforms.

And in any case, the things you get from g_io_channel_unix_get_fd()
and g_io_channel_win32_get_fd() can not in general be handled the same
way on Unix and Win32, so having different function names is rather
natural. 

(You cannot read() and write() a SOCKET on Windows, for instance. And
taking into consideration how watches on GIOChannels for fds is
implemented on Windows (with separate threads for each watched
channel, that sits blocking in read()), you can't have your code
calling read() on a fd that has a GIOChannel that is being watched
either. You should use g_io_channel_read().)

> Shouldn't Glib/Gtk/etc be ABSTRACTION libraries?

Not really. If GLib would want to be a total abstraction library also
for file and network I/O, with all platform differences hidden away,
then it would have to provide a complete file and socket I/O
layer. I.e. you would have to open files and sockets also through GLib
functions. It would essentially be a re-implementation of large parts
of Mozilla's NSPR.

--tml