Joerg Sonnenberger <jo...@bec.de> wrote: > > > > Here is patch to import the FreeBSD's libnv library: > > > > http://www.netbsd.org/~rmind/libnv.diff > > I don't think anything has changed since the last time this was > discussed, so I consider this a really, really wrong idea going forward. > The only advantage libnv has over proplib is being somewhat simpler. It > doesn't address any other concern like lack of schemas.
I do not think there was any conclusion either, or a conclusion that we always want to have static serialisation with a schema (IMO, there are pros and cons in both cases). Worth noting that there are multiple libraries already: we already imported libnvpair (with tons of other code for ZFS and DTrace) and nobody complained; we still have XDR. While libnv is not a panacea, it solves some actual problems: it has intuitive reference counting (symmetric API), it supports accumulated error handling, it provides more efficient binary encoding, it does not have shared structures with internal locking, it does not have awkward API. As a side note, it also makes code sharing with FreeBSD (as well as illumos) much easier. Meanwhile, there has been little action on improving proplib or proposing a tangible replacement of it. Anyway, I am not proposing that everybody should use libnv. However, it is is quite lightweight and self-contained. I am already using libnv in the upstream NPF. The conversion to libnv made the code simpler, shorter and easier to read. And I am not planning to maintain proplib version: it causes too much headache and the differences are too vast. -- Mindaugas
