This project is a sub-project of the larger Flow-IPC meta-project. Please see
a similar README.md for Flow-IPC, first. You can most likely find it either in the parent
directory to this one; or else in a sibling GitHub repository named ipc.git.
A more grounded description of the various sub-projects of Flow-IPC, including this one, can be found
in ./src/ipc/common.hpp off the directory containing the present README. Look for
Distributed sub-components (libraries) in a large C++ comment.
Took a look at those? Still interested in ipc_core as an independent entity? Then read on. Before you
do though: it is, typically, both easier and more functional to simply treat Flow-IPC as a whole.
To do so it is sufficient to never have to delve into topics discussed in this README. In particular
the Flow-IPC generated documentation guided Manual + Reference are monolithic and cover all the
sub-projects together, including this one.
Still interested? Then read on.
ipc_core depends on flow and no other ipc_* components. It provides
ipc::util and ipc::transport (excluding ipc::transport::struc). Therefore, it's got the basics
(such as util::Native_handle and util::Shared_name) and unstructured data transport: Unix domain sockets,
POSIX MQs, and a few other items of this nature. It may well be useful to many application in its own
right: certainly decent native and Boost-y APIs exist for access to these low-level resources, but generally
not in a particularly convenient or consistent way; for example message boundaries are not consistently
implemented, and names/addresses are a mess. ipc_core is nicer.
Arguably more importantly, however, ipc_core is the dependency of all other ipc_* components. In
particular structured-data transport features of ipc::transport::struc are built on a foundation of
of ipc_core-contained low-level unstructured (blob and native-handle) transport features.
See Flow-IPC meta-project's README.md Documentation section. ipc_core lacks its own generated documentation.
However, it contributes to the aforementioned monolithic documentation through its many comments which can
(of course) be found directly in its code (./src/ipc/...). (The monolithic generated documentation scans
these comments using Doxygen, combined with its siblings' comments... and so on.)
- As a tarball/zip: The project web site links to individual releases with notes, docs, download links. We are included in a subdirectory off the Flow-IPC root.
- Via Git:
git clone --recurse-submodules git@github.com:Flow-IPC/ipc.git; orgit clone git@github.com:Flow-IPC/ipc_core.git
See INSTALL guide.
See CONTRIBUTING guide.