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Using gRPC for (local) inter-process communication (2021)

(www.mpi-hd.mpg.de)
112 points zardinality | 2 comments | 20 Nov 24 13:42 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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pjmlp ◴[20 Nov 24 17:04 UTC] No.42195953[source]▶
> Using a full-featured RPC framework for IPC seems like overkill when the processes run on the same machine.

That is exactly what COM/WinRT, XPC, Android Binder, D-BUS are.

Naturally they have several optimisations for local execution.

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jeffbee ◴[20 Nov 24 17:39 UTC] No.42196335[source]▶
Binder seriously underappreciated, IMHO. But I think it makes sense to use gRPC or something like it if there is any possibility that in the future an "IPC" will become an "RPC" to a foreign host. You don't want to be stuck trying to change an IPC into an RPC if it was foreseeable that it would eventually become remote due to scale.
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1. loeg ◴[20 Nov 24 21:14 UTC] No.42198183[source]▶
Binder is totally unavailable outside of Android, right? IIRC it's pretty closely coupled to Android's security model and isn't a great fit outside of that ecosystem.
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2. p_l ◴[20 Nov 24 22:03 UTC] No.42198573[source]▶
It's usable outside Android, it's more that there's "some assembly required" involved - you need essentially a nameserver process which also handles permissions and the main one is pretty much the one in android. Also Binder itself doesn't really specify what data it exchanges around, the userland on Android uses one based on BeOS (which is where Binder comes from) but also has at least one other variant used for drivers.