IOChannel

[alex]

This is a revival of an old topic . What I'd like to do is following:

* introduce Foundation~058~~058~IOChannel interface as parent for all channels (currently, this is IO~058~~058~AbstractChannel)
* move NetChannel from IO to Net to get rid of Net dependency for IO library

The rationale for this is to have a unified interface for all the I/O functionality (network, various ports, such as serial, USB, ...) alongside with a "chainable" protocol class hierarchy. I'm already using IO in production and it works well.

I am looking for some feedback. For details, see IO library in SVN.

Alex

[guenter]

A few comments on the interface.

For having IOChannel in Foundation, I'd like to propose the following changes:

* IOChannel will become the abstract interface (all methods are pure virtual).
* We should get rid of that init() member function. Constructor + open should be sufficient for initialization.
* getName() should become name() to comply with naming conventions (since there's no setName())
* AbstractIOChannel should be derived from IOChannel and implement the various read/write functions in terms of each other
* I think we should get rid of the Channel class template. It does not really add much. Or do I miss something?

[alex]

> A few comments on the interface.

> For having IOChannel in Foundation, I'd like to propose the following changes:

* IOChannel will become the abstract interface (all methods are pure virtual).
* We should get rid of that init() member function. Constructor + open should be sufficient for initialization.
* getName() should become name() to comply with naming conventions (since there's no setName())
* AbstractIOChannel should be derived from IOChannel and implement the various read/write functions in terms of each other
* I think we should get rid of the Channel class template. It does not really add much. Or do I miss something?

>

No, you did not miss anything. Channel is a leftover from early design phases. I agree with removing init() and I'm also thinking that one read() would be sufficient. In fact, I'm inclined to duplicate AsyncIOChannel/AsyncStreamChanel hierarchy in Foundation and then provide channel implementations and streams in IO. Does that sound like a reasonable strategy?

Alex