Re: [PATCH] socket: Add AF_NETLINK support.

[Ludovic Courtès]

Greg Troxel <address@hidden> skribis:

> I think Linux-only interfaces is a real concern, as it will lead to
> guile programs that work only on Linux.
>
> An alternative is to look at something like quagga, which has a glue
> layer for various OS support for netlink/rtsock/?.   That's more work,
> but would let people implment a non-OS-specific interface on multiple
> systems and allow portable scheme code.

I just checked and Quagga’s documentation doesn’t say anything about its
library.  Is it an internal library or something really exposed to
users?

(BTW, I should note that this patch of David’s is part of his work to
support Linux containers, with a longer-term goal to support GNU/Hurd,
but that’ll be different interfaces anyway.)

> Until then, why can't the netlink code not be part of guile, and just
> another package to build and install and then access via use-modules,
> sort of how guile-pg is separate?  Other than wanting to avoid an extra
> package, what's the downside?

As I wrote, the low-level socket interface cannot be outside of libguile
because at least ‘make-socket-address’ and friends need to cooperate.
However, libnl bindings could indeed be outside of Guile.

Thanks,
Ludo’.