Proposal: UNIX domain socket

[TheMode]

Add AF_UNIX sockets, supported on most platforms. Overall, more efficient than TCP for inter-process communication.

More deeply motivated by the openjdk team JEP 380: Unix-Domain Socket Channels

[icculus]

So if we were to do this, I guess we'd hide the details in NET_Address, so we just add a NET_ResolveUnixAddress(const char *path); which "resolves" immediately, tweak a few internal things, and most of the code Just Works as-is. You just call NET_CreateClient() with that NET_Address, and wait for another process to NET_AcceptClient() on a server created with the same address. It's all abstract stream sockets then.

Note that this will never work on Windows before Windows 10, which finally added AF_UNIX to WinSock. Apparently there are other small limitations there, but for normal use cases (connect a stream socket between two processes), you're probably fine.

The other option is add no new APIs, and have the standard NET_ResolveAddress() function accept strings like "unix:/path/to/unix/socket" that it knows to turn into AF_UNIX addresses.

[icculus]

I messed around with this for way too long now, and I've decided to pass on this. Lots of weird corner cases, not a large need.