[Edbrowse-dev] curl handles and general comms design

[Karl Dahlke <eklhad@comcast.net>]

> I'm wondering if we actually need the exec at all or if we can fork and then
> set the flag and whether that'll do.

This just doesn't work well in windows.
You kind of need the separate process so you can use spawn.
See how Geoff has set up the invocation of edbrowse-js.

I know when I worked on the separation of js, the messages
were the most important part, the code just sort of fell out after that.
So I'll send along some high level thoughts
on curl requests and responses.

Yes, a more generic messaging system, a layer above sockets, might be nice,
and I almost did that with js.
I sort of had to for my own sanity.
The message header includes a length for an error string,
and then the error string, if there is one, (length nonzero),
then the length for the js side effects,
and the side effects, if there are any,
and finally the js item requested or the acknowledgement of the action.
Now I have some general parsing of every message.
I can glom onto the js error, if any,
as part of the message envelope,
and the same for js side effects.
A higher level structure like this might be what you're looking for,
and it doesn't take a lot of coding to seee that you need it.

Karl Dahlke