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Cap'n Proto
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2019-09-15 19:09:43 +02:00
# Copyright (c) 2013-2014 Sandstorm Development Group, Inc. and contributors
# Licensed under the MIT License:
#
# Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
# of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
# in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
# to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
# copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
# furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
#
# The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
# all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
#
# THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
# IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
# FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
# AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
# LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
# OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN
# THE SOFTWARE.
@0xa184c7885cdaf2a1;
# This file defines the "network-specific parameters" in rpc.capnp to support a network consisting
# of two vats. Each of these vats may in fact be in communication with other vats, but any
# capabilities they forward must be proxied. Thus, to each end of the connection, all capabilities
# received from the other end appear to live in a single vat.
#
# Two notable use cases for this model include:
# - Regular client-server communications, where a remote client machine (perhaps living on an end
# user's personal device) connects to a server. The server may be part of a cluster, and may
# call on other servers in the cluster to help service the user's request. It may even obtain
# capabilities from these other servers which it passes on to the user. To simplify network
# common traversal problems (e.g. if the user is behind a firewall), it is probably desirable to
# multiplex all communications between the server cluster and the client over the original
# connection rather than form new ones. This connection should use the two-party protocol, as
# the client has no interest in knowing about additional servers.
# - Applications running in a sandbox. A supervisor process may execute a confined application
# such that all of the confined app's communications with the outside world must pass through
# the supervisor. In this case, the connection between the confined app and the supervisor might
# as well use the two-party protocol, because the confined app is intentionally prevented from
# talking to any other vat anyway. Any external resources will be proxied through the supervisor,
# and so to the contained app will appear as if they were hosted by the supervisor itself.
#
# Since there are only two vats in this network, there is never a need for three-way introductions,
# so level 3 is free. Moreover, because it is never necessary to form new connections, the
# two-party protocol can be used easily anywhere where a two-way byte stream exists, without regard
# to where that byte stream goes or how it was initiated. This makes the two-party runtime library
# highly reusable.
#
# Joins (level 4) _could_ be needed in cases where one or both vats are participating in other
# networks that use joins. For instance, if Alice and Bob are speaking through the two-party
# protocol, and Bob is also participating on another network, Bob may send Alice two or more
# proxied capabilities which, unbeknownst to Bob at the time, are in fact pointing at the same
# remote object. Alice may then request to join these capabilities, at which point Bob will have
# to forward the join to the other network. Note, however, that if Alice is _not_ participating on
# any other network, then Alice will never need to _receive_ a Join, because Alice would always
# know when two locally-hosted capabilities are the same and would never export a redundant alias
# to Bob. So, Alice can respond to all incoming joins with an error, and only needs to implement
# outgoing joins if she herself desires to use this feature. Also, outgoing joins are relatively
# easy to implement in this scenario.
#
# What all this means is that a level 4 implementation of the confined network is barely more
# complicated than a level 2 implementation. However, such an implementation allows the "client"
# or "confined" app to access the server's/supervisor's network with equal functionality to any
# native participant. In other words, an application which implements only the two-party protocol
# can be paired with a proxy app in order to participate in any network.
#
# So, when implementing Cap'n Proto in a new language, it makes sense to implement only the
# two-party protocol initially, and then pair applications with an appropriate proxy written in
# C++, rather than implement other parameterizations of the RPC protocol directly.
using Cxx = import "/capnp/c++.capnp";
$Cxx.namespace("capnp::rpc::twoparty");
# Note: SturdyRef is not specified here. It is up to the application to define semantics of
# SturdyRefs if desired.
enum Side {
server @0;
# The object lives on the "server" or "supervisor" end of the connection. Only the
# server/supervisor knows how to interpret the ref; to the client, it is opaque.
#
# Note that containers intending to implement strong confinement should rewrite SturdyRefs
# received from the external network before passing them on to the confined app. The confined
# app thus does not ever receive the raw bits of the SturdyRef (which it could perhaps
# maliciously leak), but instead receives only a thing that it can pass back to the container
# later to restore the ref. See:
# http://www.erights.org/elib/capability/dist-confine.html
client @1;
# The object lives on the "client" or "confined app" end of the connection. Only the client
# knows how to interpret the ref; to the server/supervisor, it is opaque. Most clients do not
# actually know how to persist capabilities at all, so use of this is unusual.
}
struct VatId {
side @0 :Side;
}
struct ProvisionId {
# Only used for joins, since three-way introductions never happen on a two-party network.
joinId @0 :UInt32;
# The ID from `JoinKeyPart`.
}
struct RecipientId {}
# Never used, because there are only two parties.
struct ThirdPartyCapId {}
# Never used, because there is no third party.
struct JoinKeyPart {
# Joins in the two-party case are simplified by a few observations.
#
# First, on a two-party network, a Join only ever makes sense if the receiving end is also
# connected to other networks. A vat which is not connected to any other network can safely
# reject all joins.
#
# Second, since a two-party connection bisects the network -- there can be no other connections
# between the networks at either end of the connection -- if one part of a join crosses the
# connection, then _all_ parts must cross it. Therefore, a vat which is receiving a Join request
# off some other network which needs to be forwarded across the two-party connection can
# collect all the parts on its end and only forward them across the two-party connection when all
# have been received.
#
# For example, imagine that Alice and Bob are vats connected over a two-party connection, and
# each is also connected to other networks. At some point, Alice receives one part of a Join
# request off her network. The request is addressed to a capability that Alice received from
# Bob and is proxying to her other network. Alice goes ahead and responds to the Join part as
# if she hosted the capability locally (this is important so that if not all the Join parts end
# up at Alice, the original sender can detect the failed Join without hanging). As other parts
# trickle in, Alice verifies that each part is addressed to a capability from Bob and continues
# to respond to each one. Once the complete set of join parts is received, Alice checks if they
# were all for the exact same capability. If so, she doesn't need to send anything to Bob at
# all. Otherwise, she collects the set of capabilities (from Bob) to which the join parts were
# addressed and essentially initiates a _new_ Join request on those capabilities to Bob. Alice
# does not forward the Join parts she received herself, but essentially forwards the Join as a
# whole.
#
# On Bob's end, since he knows that Alice will always send all parts of a Join together, he
# simply waits until he's received them all, then performs a join on the respective capabilities
# as if it had been requested locally.
joinId @0 :UInt32;
# A number identifying this join, chosen by the sender. May be reused once `Finish` messages are
# sent corresponding to all of the `Join` messages.
partCount @1 :UInt16;
# The number of capabilities to be joined.
partNum @2 :UInt16;
# Which part this request targets -- a number in the range [0, partCount).
}
struct JoinResult {
joinId @0 :UInt32;
# Matches `JoinKeyPart`.
succeeded @1 :Bool;
# All JoinResults in the set will have the same value for `succeeded`. The receiver actually
# implements the join by waiting for all the `JoinKeyParts` and then performing its own join on
# them, then going back and answering all the join requests afterwards.
cap @2 :AnyPointer;
# One of the JoinResults will have a non-null `cap` which is the joined capability.
#
# TODO(cleanup): Change `AnyPointer` to `Capability` when that is supported.
}