The VFS library can be used in single-threaded or multi-threaded
environments and depending on that, signals are handled by the same thread
which uses the VFS library or possibly by a different thread. If a VFS
plugin needs to block to wait for a signal, there is currently no way
which works reliably in both environments.
For this reason, this commit makes the interface of the VFS library
nonblocking, similar to the File_system session interface.
The most important changes are:
- Directories are created and opened with the 'opendir()' function and the
directory entries are read with the recently introduced 'queue_read()'
and 'complete_read()' functions.
- Symbolic links are created and opened with the 'openlink()' function and
the link target is read with the 'queue_read()' and 'complete_read()'
functions and written with the 'write()' function.
- The 'write()' function does not wait for signals anymore. This can have
the effect that data written by a VFS library user has not been
processed by a file system server yet when the library user asks for the
size of the file or closes it (both done with RPC functions at the file
system server). For this reason, a user of the VFS library should
request synchronization before calling 'stat()' or 'close()'. To make
sure that a file system server has processed all write request packets
which a client submitted before the synchronization request,
synchronization is now requested at the file system server with a
synchronization packet instead of an RPC function. Because of this
change, the synchronization interface of the VFS library is now split
into 'queue_sync()' and 'complete_sync()' functions.
Fixes#2399
Opening a VFS handle previously involved allocating from the global heap
at each VFS file system. By amending open with an allocator argument,
dynamic allocation can be partitioned.
A new close method is used to deallocate open handles.
Issue #1751
Issue #1891
This patch changes the top-level directory layout as a preparatory
step for improving the tools for managing 3rd-party source codes.
The rationale is described in the issue referenced below.
Issue #1082
