[HN Gopher] Varlink: Interface description format and protocol f...
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       Varlink: Interface description format and protocol for humans and
       machines
        
       Author : based2
       Score  : 22 points
       Date   : 2021-01-03 14:26 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (varlink.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (varlink.org)
        
       | detaro wrote:
       | frontpage seems clearer about what it actually is:
       | https://varlink.org/
        
         | ampdepolymerase wrote:
         | Seems like some sort of gRPC alternative for microcontrollers.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | rikroots wrote:
       | On a complete tangent - because after reading the link I remain
       | clueless about what services/things varlink wants to connect (and
       | also: why are the error messages not human readable by default?)
       | - I find myself wondering if the time has yet come for us to
       | start writing our Human-Machine interfaces in Lojban[1]?
       | 
       | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban and
       | https://mw.lojban.org/papri/Lojban#Learning_Lojban
        
       | kdps wrote:
       | The first time I came across varlink was the Podman 1.x remote
       | API for client/server communication between clients and a host
       | with the actual Podman installation. However, in Podman 2.x, it
       | was replaced by a RESTful API. Afair, the reason was that the
       | varlink C client was discontinued. Does anyone know if varlink is
       | still actively maintained?
        
       | jitl wrote:
       | Here are some facts I gathered last time Varlink was discussed:
       | 
       | Varlink is produced by Red Hat, apparently - or by people who use
       | Red Hat things: both examples (DNF, Podman) are Redhat projects.
       | 
       | It seems to be an effort to apply the Interface Definition
       | Language model to UNIX daemons/services/tools by adding a new
       | "standard IO file descriptor" for _structured IO_ using a typed
       | interface, as opposed to the current STDIN /STDOUT/STDERR which
       | are existing un typed byte streams.
       | 
       | Using a new FD instead of agreeing to layer Varlink protocol over
       | STDIO means that existing programs can adopt Varlink without
       | breaking backwards compat or making negotiation even more
       | complicated.
       | 
       | EDIT: Podman removed Varlink
       | https://podman.io/blogs/2020/01/17/podman-new-api.html
        
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       (page generated 2021-01-03 23:02 UTC)