Currently, NMClient by default always fetches the permissions
("GetPermissions()") and refreshes them on "CheckPermissions" signal.
Fetching permissions is relatively expensive, while they are not used
most of the time. Allow the user to opt out of this.
For that, have a NMClientInstanceFlags to enable/disable automatic
fetching. Also add a "permissions-state" property that allows the user
to understand whether the cached permissions are up to date or not.
This is a bit an awkward API for handling this. E.g. you cannot
explicitly request permissions, you can just enable/disable fetching
permissions. And then you can watch the permission-state to know whether
you are ready. It's done this way because it fits the previous model
and extends the API with a (relative) small amount of new functions and
properties.
Add a flags property to control behavior of NMClient.
Possible future use cases:
- currently it would always automatically fetch permissions. Often that
is not used and the user could opt out of it.
- currently, using sync init creates an internal GMainContext. This
has an overhead and may be undesirable. We could implement another
"sync" initialization that would merely iterate the callers mainloop
until the initialization completes. A flag would allow to opt in.
- currently, NMClient always fetches all connection settings
automatically. Via a flag the user could opt out of that.
Instead NMClient could provide an API so the user can request
settings as they are needed.
On D-Bus, the permission names are just the PolicyKit action names, like
"org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.wifi.scan". But NMClient already
ignores all strings that it doesn't know at compile time and only
keeps track of well known permission.
And neither does the API nm_client_get_permissions_result() allow to
expose permissions unknown to libnm.
Maybe the API of NMClient should be more generic and allow exposing
any permissions announced by NetworkManager. As it is however, it's
not necessary to track the permissions in a hash table. An array with
fixed indices is sufficient.
I have a coredump that seems to indicate that nm_device_get_active_connection()
did not return a valid object. Let's add an assertion, trying to identify the
issue earlier. Aside from that, this change isn't useful, but an nm_assert()
shouldn't hurt anyway.
The NMClient is associated with a certain context. Add a getter
function to give the context.
The context is really not internal API of NMClient, that is because
the user must iterate this context and be aware of it.
Usually, the nmobj never gets reused for one dbobj. That means,
we really don't expect a nml_dbus_property_o_notify() for a property
that was already cleared.
However, that is for example not the case with NMClient itself. As NetworkManager
gets restarted, the name owner gets lost, the property cleared but afterwards
it might get notified again.
That means, nml_dbus_property_o_notify() and nml_dbus_property_o_clear() must
work well together, otherwise a sequence of
nml_dbus_property_o_notify()
nml_dbus_property_o_clear()
nml_dbus_property_o_notify()
leads to an assertion failure "nm_assert (!pr_o->is_ready)".
Fixes: ce0e898fb4 ('libnm: refactor caching of D-Bus objects in NMClient')
NMClient makes asynchronous D-Bus calls via g_dbus_connection_call().
This references the current GMainContext to later invoke the
asynchronous callback. Even when we cancel the asynchronous call,
the callback will still be invoked (later) to complete the request.
In particular this means when we destroy (unref) an NMClient, there
are quite possibly pending requests in the GMainContext. Although they
are cancelled, they keep the GMainContext alive.
With synchronous initialization, we have an internal GMainContext.
When we destroy the NMClient, we cannot just unhook the integrated
source, instead, we need to keep it integrated in the caller's main
context, as long as there are pending requests.
Add a mechanism to track those pending requests and fix the leak for the
internal GMainContext. Also expose the same mechanism to the user via a new
API called nm_client_get_context_busy_watcher(). This allows the user
to know when it can stop iterating the main context and when all
resources are reclaimed.
For example the following will lead to a crash:
for i in range(1,2000):
nmc = NM.Client.new(None)
This creates a number of NMClient instances and destroys them again.
Note that here the GMainContext is never iterated, because
synchronous initialization does not iterate the caller's context. So,
while we correctly unref and dispose the created NMClient instances,
there are pending requests left in the inner GMainContext. These pile
up and soon the program will crash because it runs out of file descriptors.
We can have a similar problem with asynchronous initialization, when
we create a new GMainContext per client, and don't iterate it after
we are done with the client.
Note that this patch does not avoid the problem in general. The problem
cannot be avoided, the user must iterate the main contex at some point.
Otherwise resources (memory and file descriptors) will be leaked.
Fixes: ce0e898fb4 ('libnm: refactor caching of D-Bus objects in NMClient')
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/NetworkManager/NetworkManager/merge_requests/347
No longer use GDBusObjectMangaerClient and gdbus-codegen generated classes
for the NMClient cache. Instead, use GDBusConnection directly and a
custom implementation (NMLDBusObject) for caching D-Bus' ObjectManager
data.
CHANGES
-------
- This is a complete rework. I think the previous implementation was
difficult to understand. There were unfixed bugs and nobody understood
the code well enough to fix them. Maybe somebody out there understood the
code, but I certainly did not. At least nobody provided patches to fix those
issues. I do believe that this implementation is more straightforward and
easier to understand. It removes a lot of layers of code. Whether this claim
of simplicity is true, each reader must decide for himself/herself. Note
that it is still fairly complex.
- There was a lingering performance issue with large number of D-Bus
objects. The patch tries hard that the implementation scales well. Of
course, when we cache N objects that have N-to-M references to other,
we still are fundamentally O(N*M) for runtime and memory consumption (with
M being the number of references between objects). But each part should behave
efficiently and well.
- Play well with GMainContext. libnm code (NMClient) is generally not
thread safe. However, it should work to use multiple instances in
parallel, as long as each access to a NMClient is through the caller's
GMainContext. This follows glib's style and effectively allows to use NMClient
in a multi threaded scenario. This implies to stick to a main context
upon construction and ensure that callbacks are only invoked when
iterating that context. Also, NMClient itself shall never iterate the
caller's context. This also means, libnm must never use g_idle_add() or
g_timeout_add(), as those enqueue sources in the g_main_context_default()
context.
- Get ordering of messages right. All events are consistently enqueued
in a GMainContext and processed strictly in order. For example,
previously "nm-object.c" tried to combine signals and emit them on an
idle handler. That is wrong, signals must be emitted in the right order
and when they happen. Note that when using GInitable's synchronous initialization
to initialize the NMClient instance, NMClient internally still operates fully
asynchronously. In that case NMClient has an internal main context.
- NMClient takes over most of the functionality. When using D-Bus'
ObjectManager interface, one needs to handle basically the entire state
of the D-Bus interface. That cannot be separated well into distinct
parts, and even if you try, you just end up having closely related code
in different source files. Spreading related code does not make it
easier to understand, on the contrary. That means, NMClient is
inherently complex as it contains most of the logic. I think that is
not avoidable, but it's not as bad as it sounds.
- NMClient processes D-Bus messages and state changes in separate steps.
First NMClient unpacks the message (e.g. _dbus_handle_properties_changed()) and
keeps track of the changed data. Then we update the GObject instances
(_dbus_handle_obj_changed_dbus()) without emitting any signals yet. Finally,
we emit all signals and notifications that were collected
(_dbus_handle_changes_commit()). Note that for example during the initial
GetManagedObjects() reply, NMClient receive a large amount of state at once.
But we first apply all the changes to our GObject instances before
emitting any signals. The result is that signals are always emitted in a moment
when the cache is consistent. The unavoidable downside is that when you receive
a property changed signal, possibly many other properties changed
already and more signals are about to be emitted.
- NMDeviceWifi no longer modifies the content of the cache from client side
during poke_wireless_devices_with_rf_status(). The content of the cache
should be determined by D-Bus alone and follow what NetworkManager
service exposes. Local modifications should be avoided.
- This aims to bring no API/ABI change, though it does of course bring
various subtle changes in behavior. Those should be all for the better, but the
goal is not to break any existing clients. This does change internal
(albeit externally visible) API, like dropping NM_OBJECT_DBUS_OBJECT_MANAGER
property and NMObject no longer implementing GInitableIface and GAsyncInitableIface.
- Some uses of gdbus-codegen classes remain in NMVpnPluginOld, NMVpnServicePlugin
and NMSecretAgentOld. These are independent of NMClient/NMObject and
should be reworked separately.
- While we no longer use generated classes from gdbus-codegen, we don't
need more glue code than before. Also before we constructed NMPropertiesInfo and
a had large amount of code to propagate properties from NMDBus* to NMObject.
That got completely reworked, but did not fundamentally change. You still need
about the same effort to create the NMLDBusMetaIface. Not using
generated bindings did not make anything worse (which tells about the
usefulness of generated code, at least in the way it was used).
- NMLDBusMetaIface and other meta data is static and immutable. This
avoids copying them around. Also, macros like NML_DBUS_META_PROPERTY_INIT_U()
have compile time checks to ensure the property types matches. It's pretty hard
to misuse them because it won't compile.
- The meta data now explicitly encodes the expected D-Bus types and
makes sure never to accept wrong data. That would only matter when the
server (accidentally or intentionally) exposes unexpected types on
D-Bus. I don't think that was previously ensured in all cases.
For example, demarshal_generic() only cared about the GObject property
type, it didn't know the expected D-Bus type.
- Previously GDBusObjectManager would sometimes emit warnings (g_log()). Those
probably indicated real bugs. In any case, it prevented us from running CI
with G_DEBUG=fatal-warnings, because there would be just too many
unrelated crashes. Now we log debug messages that can be enabled with
"LIBNM_CLIENT_DEBUG=trace". Some of these messages can also be turned
into g_warning()/g_critical() by setting LIBNM_CLIENT_DEBUG=warning,error.
Together with G_DEBUG=fatal-warnings, this turns them into assertions.
Note that such "assertion failures" might also happen because of a server
bug (or change). Thus these are not common assertions that indicate a bug
in libnm and are thus not armed unless explicitly requested. In our CI we
should now always run with LIBNM_CLIENT_DEBUG=warning,error and
G_DEBUG=fatal-warnings and to catch bugs. Note that currently
NetworkManager has bugs in this regard, so enabling this will result in
assertion failures. That should be fixed first.
- Note that this changes the order in which we emit "notify:devices" and
"device-added" signals. I think it makes the most sense to emit first
"device-removed", then "notify:devices", and finally "device-added"
signals.
This changes behavior for commit 52ae28f6e5 ('libnm: queue
added/removed signals and suppress uninitialized notifications'),
but I don't think that users should actually rely on the order. Still,
the new order makes the most sense to me.
- In NetworkManager, profiles can be invisible to the user by setting
"connection.permissions". Such profiles would be hidden by NMClient's
nm_client_get_connections() and their "connection-added"/"connection-removed"
signals.
Note that NMActiveConnection's nm_active_connection_get_connection()
and NMDevice's nm_device_get_available_connections() still exposes such
hidden NMRemoteConnection instances. This behavior was preserved.
NUMBERS
-------
I compared 3 versions of libnm.
[1] 962297f908, current tip of nm-1-20 branch
[2] 4fad8c7c64, current master, immediate parent of this patch
[3] this patch
All tests were done on Fedora 31, x86_64, gcc 9.2.1-1.fc31.
The libraries were build with
$ ./contrib/fedora/rpm/build_clean.sh -g -w test -W debug
Note that RPM build already stripped the library.
---
N1) File size of libnm.so.0.1.0 in bytes. There currently seems to be a issue
on Fedora 31 generating wrong ELF notes. Usually, libnm is smaller but
in these tests it had large (and bogus) ELF notes. Anyway, the point
is to show the relative sizes, so it doesn't matter).
[1] 4075552 (102.7%)
[2] 3969624 (100.0%)
[3] 3705208 ( 93.3%)
---
N2) `size /usr/lib64/libnm.so.0.1.0`:
text data bss dec hex filename
[1] 1314569 (102.0%) 69980 ( 94.8%) 10632 ( 80.4%) 1395181 (101.4%) 1549ed /usr/lib64/libnm.so.0.1.0
[2] 1288410 (100.0%) 73796 (100.0%) 13224 (100.0%) 1375430 (100.0%) 14fcc6 /usr/lib64/libnm.so.0.1.0
[3] 1229066 ( 95.4%) 65248 ( 88.4%) 13400 (101.3%) 1307714 ( 95.1%) 13f442 /usr/lib64/libnm.so.0.1.0
---
N3) Performance test with test-client.py. With checkout of [2], run
```
prepare_checkout() {
rm -rf /tmp/nm-test && \
git checkout -B test 4fad8c7c64 && \
git clean -fdx && \
./autogen.sh --prefix=/tmp/nm-test && \
make -j 5 install && \
make -j 5 check-local-clients-tests-test-client
}
prepare_test() {
NM_TEST_REGENERATE=1 NM_TEST_CLIENT_BUILDDIR="/data/src/NetworkManager" NM_TEST_CLIENT_NMCLI_PATH=/usr/bin/nmcli python3 ./clients/tests/test-client.py -v
}
do_test() {
for i in {1..10}; do
NM_TEST_CLIENT_BUILDDIR="/data/src/NetworkManager" NM_TEST_CLIENT_NMCLI_PATH=/usr/bin/nmcli python3 ./clients/tests/test-client.py -v || return -1
done
echo "done!"
}
prepare_checkout
prepare_test
time do_test
```
[1] real 2m14.497s (101.3%) user 5m26.651s (100.3%) sys 1m40.453s (101.4%)
[2] real 2m12.800s (100.0%) user 5m25.619s (100.0%) sys 1m39.065s (100.0%)
[3] real 1m54.915s ( 86.5%) user 4m18.585s ( 79.4%) sys 1m32.066s ( 92.9%)
---
N4) Performance. Run NetworkManager from build [2] and setup a large number
of profiles (551 profiles and 515 devices, mostly unrealized). This
setup is already at the edge of what NetworkManager currently can
handle. Of course, that is a different issue. Here we just check how
long plain `nmcli` takes on the system.
```
do_cleanup() {
for UUID in $(nmcli -g NAME,UUID connection show | sed -n 's/^xx-c-.*:\([^:]\+\)$/\1/p'); do
nmcli connection delete uuid "$UUID"
done
for DEVICE in $(nmcli -g DEVICE device status | grep '^xx-i-'); do
nmcli device delete "$DEVICE"
done
}
do_setup() {
do_cleanup
for i in {1..30}; do
nmcli connection add type bond autoconnect no con-name xx-c-bond-$i ifname xx-i-bond-$i ipv4.method disabled ipv6.method ignore
for j in $(seq $i 30); do
nmcli connection add type vlan autoconnect no con-name xx-c-vlan-$i-$j vlan.id $j ifname xx-i-vlan-$i-$j vlan.parent xx-i-bond-$i ipv4.method disabled ipv6.method ignore
done
done
systemctl restart NetworkManager.service
sleep 5
}
do_test() {
perf stat -r 50 -B nmcli 1>/dev/null
}
do_test
```
[1]
Performance counter stats for 'nmcli' (50 runs):
456.33 msec task-clock:u # 1.093 CPUs utilized ( +- 0.44% )
0 context-switches:u # 0.000 K/sec
0 cpu-migrations:u # 0.000 K/sec
5,900 page-faults:u # 0.013 M/sec ( +- 0.02% )
1,408,675,453 cycles:u # 3.087 GHz ( +- 0.48% )
1,594,741,060 instructions:u # 1.13 insn per cycle ( +- 0.02% )
368,744,018 branches:u # 808.061 M/sec ( +- 0.02% )
4,566,058 branch-misses:u # 1.24% of all branches ( +- 0.76% )
0.41761 +- 0.00282 seconds time elapsed ( +- 0.68% )
[2]
Performance counter stats for 'nmcli' (50 runs):
477.99 msec task-clock:u # 1.088 CPUs utilized ( +- 0.36% )
0 context-switches:u # 0.000 K/sec
0 cpu-migrations:u # 0.000 K/sec
5,948 page-faults:u # 0.012 M/sec ( +- 0.03% )
1,471,133,482 cycles:u # 3.078 GHz ( +- 0.36% )
1,655,275,369 instructions:u # 1.13 insn per cycle ( +- 0.02% )
382,595,152 branches:u # 800.433 M/sec ( +- 0.02% )
4,746,070 branch-misses:u # 1.24% of all branches ( +- 0.49% )
0.43923 +- 0.00242 seconds time elapsed ( +- 0.55% )
[3]
Performance counter stats for 'nmcli' (50 runs):
352.36 msec task-clock:u # 1.027 CPUs utilized ( +- 0.32% )
0 context-switches:u # 0.000 K/sec
0 cpu-migrations:u # 0.000 K/sec
4,790 page-faults:u # 0.014 M/sec ( +- 0.26% )
1,092,341,186 cycles:u # 3.100 GHz ( +- 0.26% )
1,209,045,283 instructions:u # 1.11 insn per cycle ( +- 0.02% )
281,708,462 branches:u # 799.499 M/sec ( +- 0.01% )
3,101,031 branch-misses:u # 1.10% of all branches ( +- 0.61% )
0.34296 +- 0.00120 seconds time elapsed ( +- 0.35% )
---
N5) same setup as N4), but run `PAGER= /bin/time -v nmcli`:
[1]
Command being timed: "nmcli"
User time (seconds): 0.42
System time (seconds): 0.04
Percent of CPU this job got: 107%
Elapsed (wall clock) time (h:mm:ss or m:ss): 0:00.43
Average shared text size (kbytes): 0
Average unshared data size (kbytes): 0
Average stack size (kbytes): 0
Average total size (kbytes): 0
Maximum resident set size (kbytes): 34456
Average resident set size (kbytes): 0
Major (requiring I/O) page faults: 0
Minor (reclaiming a frame) page faults: 6128
Voluntary context switches: 1298
Involuntary context switches: 1106
Swaps: 0
File system inputs: 0
File system outputs: 0
Socket messages sent: 0
Socket messages received: 0
Signals delivered: 0
Page size (bytes): 4096
Exit status: 0
[2]
Command being timed: "nmcli"
User time (seconds): 0.44
System time (seconds): 0.04
Percent of CPU this job got: 108%
Elapsed (wall clock) time (h:mm:ss or m:ss): 0:00.44
Average shared text size (kbytes): 0
Average unshared data size (kbytes): 0
Average stack size (kbytes): 0
Average total size (kbytes): 0
Maximum resident set size (kbytes): 34452
Average resident set size (kbytes): 0
Major (requiring I/O) page faults: 0
Minor (reclaiming a frame) page faults: 6169
Voluntary context switches: 1849
Involuntary context switches: 142
Swaps: 0
File system inputs: 0
File system outputs: 0
Socket messages sent: 0
Socket messages received: 0
Signals delivered: 0
Page size (bytes): 4096
Exit status: 0
[3]
Command being timed: "nmcli"
User time (seconds): 0.32
System time (seconds): 0.02
Percent of CPU this job got: 102%
Elapsed (wall clock) time (h:mm:ss or m:ss): 0:00.34
Average shared text size (kbytes): 0
Average unshared data size (kbytes): 0
Average stack size (kbytes): 0
Average total size (kbytes): 0
Maximum resident set size (kbytes): 29196
Average resident set size (kbytes): 0
Major (requiring I/O) page faults: 0
Minor (reclaiming a frame) page faults: 5059
Voluntary context switches: 919
Involuntary context switches: 685
Swaps: 0
File system inputs: 0
File system outputs: 0
Socket messages sent: 0
Socket messages received: 0
Signals delivered: 0
Page size (bytes): 4096
Exit status: 0
---
N6) same setup as N4), but run `nmcli monitor` and look at `ps aux` for
the RSS size.
USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND
[1] me 1492900 21.0 0.2 461348 33248 pts/10 Sl+ 15:02 0:00 nmcli monitor
[2] me 1490721 5.0 0.2 461496 33548 pts/10 Sl+ 15:00 0:00 nmcli monitor
[3] me 1495801 16.5 0.1 459476 28692 pts/10 Sl+ 15:04 0:00 nmcli monitor
The server doesn's support WiMAX anymore. Hence there is no point in keeping
this functionality. While we cannot drop the functions, let them not do anything.
The code in NMManager is still there. But since we will soon drop
NMManager entirely, it doesn't matter.
WiMAX is deprecated since NetworkManager 1.2.0. Note that also
NetworkManager on server side no longer supports this type, hence
the server's D-Bus API will never expose devices of this type.
Note that NMDeviceWimax and NMWimaxNsp are NMObject types. That means,
they are instantiated by NMClient to represent information on the D-Bus
interface. As NetworkManager no longer exposes WiMAX devices, such
devices are never created. Note that it makes no sense that a user would
directly instantiate NMObject types, because they only work together with
NMClient.
Don't drop the related symbols and definitions from libnm, so that there
is no API/ABI change (as far as building and linking is concerned). But
make the types defunctional (which of course is a behavioral API change).
Calling the API now triggers a g_return_*() warning.
Also belatedly mark the WimaxNsp API as deprecated. It should have been
done in 1.2. Note that here we deprecate the API and retire it at the
same time. Optimally, we would have deprecated it a few releases ago,
before retiring it. However, marking something for deprecation is anyway
no excuse for anything. I mean, removing or retiring API is usually
painful, regardless whether it was marked for deprecation or not. In this
case, there is no possibility that a libnm user gets hold on a NMDeviceWimax
or NMWimaxNsp instance, because NMClient simply no longer instantiates
them. Hence, this change should not affect any user in practice.
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/NetworkManager/NetworkManager/merge_requests/316
Having the NMClient/NMClientClass structs in the public header allows
the user to subclass these types. Subclassing this type was never
intended, nor is it supported, nor does it seem useful. Subclassing only
makes sense if the type has suitable hooks to extend the type in a
meaningful way. NMClient hasn't, and everybody trying to derive from
this class would better delegate the actions.
Also, having these structs in the public header prevents us from
embedding the private data in the object structure itself.
It has thus an runtime overhead and is less convenient for debugging (it's
hard to find the private data pointer in gdb).
Most importantly, there is no easy way to find the offset of the private
data fields, short of calling NM_CLIENT_GET_PRIVATE() -- which currently
is a macro. Later we want to generically lookup the offset of the
private data, we would need NM_CLIENT_GET_PRIVATE() as a function.
Instead, by having an internally, statically known offset, we can use
that offset instead.
Also drop all signal hooks. They are also not useful.
This is an ABI and API change, but of something that we never wanted to
be part of the ABI/API, and which hopefull nobody is using.
It's not yet implemented. But obviously it's interesting to
get the name owner to which the NMClient is currently connected.
Note only that: the name-owner property really says whether
NM is currently running or not.
The used GDBusConnection should be configurable when creating the
NMClient instance. Automatically choosing one of the g_bus_get()
singletons is fine by default, but it's an unnecessary limitation.
We will require this later. The NMClient shall be tied to the GMainContext
at the moment when the instance gets created. This allows the user to have
multiple, indendent NMClient instances (on different threads and GMainContext).
Currently this is still unused, it will be later.
This looks up the GParamSpec from the obj_properties and is
thus more efficient. Also, the generated _notify() function
has the proper argument type and is thus generally preferable.
This is not merely cosmetic. I will need the obj_properties
array to lookup GParamSpec by their PROP_* enum value. The
alternative would be lookup by name, which is more expensive.
We still need the bits in "nm-manager.c", to wait until the
NMActiveConnection instance is ready. This is now done by
nm_manager_complete_active_connection().
Eventually, I will refactor libnm to no longer use gdbus-codegen and
no GDBusProxy. In preparation of that, we must stop using that
API.
As first step, change nm_client_deactivate_connection(). Note how this
was done previously:
- nm_client_deactivate_connection() calls nm_manager_deactivate_connection()
- nmdbus_manager_call_deactivate_connection_sync() calls g_dbus_proxy_call_sync()
- g_dbus_proxy_call_sync() calls g_dbus_connection_call_sync()
Currently this is still a bit ugly, because NMClient doesn't directly
track the GDBusConnection nor the name owner. Instead, we need to peel
it out of the object manager. One day, that will all be nicer, but first
get rid of gdbus-codegen.
We will drop GDBusProxy and the gdbus-codegen classes. First, we need to
replace all D-Bus calls from nmdbus_*() API with plain uses of GDBusConnection.
For that, add accessors to get the dbus-connection and the name-owner.
This API is not beautiful, it's an interim solution for now.
nm_remote_settings_load_connections() and nm_remote_settings_load_connections_async()
behave inconsistently.
It's unexpected, that a FALSE return value may leave @error unset.
Note that before commit 22e830f046 ('settings/d-bus: fix boolean
return value of "LoadConnections"'), the server boolean response
would have been bogus anyway (at least for some versions).
Unify the behavior, and ignore the boolean return value.
Note that D-Bus is fundamentally asynchronous. Doing blocking calls
on top of D-Bus is odd, especially for libnm's NMClient. That is because
NMClient essentially is a client-side cache of the objects from the D-Bus
interface. This cache should be filled exclusively by (asynchronous) D-Bus
events (PropertiesChanged). So, making a blocking D-Bus call means to wait
for a response and return it, while queuing all messages that are received
in the meantime.
Basically there are three ways how a synchronous API on NMClient could behave:
1) the call just calls g_dbus_connection_call_sync(). This means
that libnm sends a D-Bus request via GDBusConnection, and blockingly
waits for the response. All D-Bus messages that get received in the
meantime are queued in the GMainContext that belongs to NMClient.
That means, none of these D-Bus events are processed until we
iterate the GMainContext after the call returns. The effect is,
that NMClient (and all cached objects in there) are unaffected by
the D-Bus request.
Most of the synchronous API calls in libnm are of this kind.
The problem is that the strict ordering of D-Bus events gets
violated.
For some API this is not an immediate problem. Take for example
nm_device_wifi_request_scan(). The call merely blockingly tells
NetworkManager to start scanning, but since NetworkManager's D-Bus
API does not directly expose any state that tells whether we are
currently scanning, this out of order processing of the D-Bus
request is a small issue.
The problem is more obvious for nm_client_networking_set_enabled().
After calling it, NM_CLIENT_NETWORKING_ENABLED is still unaffected
and unchanged, because the PropertiesChanged signal from D-Bus
is not yet processed.
This means, while you make such a blocking call, NMClient's state
does not change. But usually you perform the synchronous call
to change some state. In this form, the blocking call is not useful,
because NMClient only changes the state after iterating the GMainContext,
and not after the blocking call returns.
2) like 1), but after making the blocking g_dbus_connection_call_sync(),
update the NMClient cache artificially. This is what
nm_manager_check_connectivity() does, to "fix" bgo#784629.
This also has the problem of out-of-order events, but it kinda
solves the problem of not changing the state during the blocking
call. But it does so by hacking the state of the cache. I think
this is really wrong because the state should only be updated from
the ordered stream of D-Bus messages (PropertiesChanged signal and
similar). When libnm decides to modify the state, there may be already
D-Bus messages queued that affect this very state.
3) instead of calling g_dbus_connection_call_sync(), use the
asynchronous g_dbus_connection_call(). If we would use a sepaate
GMainContext for all D-Bus related calls, we could ensure that
while we block for the response, we iterate that internal main context.
This might be nice, because all events are processed in order and
after the blocking call returns, the NMClient state is up to date.
The are problems however: current blocking API does not do this,
so it's a significant change in behavior. Also, it might be
unexpected to the user that during the blocking call the entire
content of NMClient's cache might change and all pointers to the
cache might be invalidated. Also, of course NMClient would invoke
signals for all the changes that happen.
Another problem is that this would be more effort to implement
and it involves a small performance overhead for all D-Bus related
calls (because we have to serialize all events in an internal
GMainContext first and then invoke them on the caller's context).
Also, if the users wants this behavior, they could implement it themself
by running libnm in their own GMainContext. Note that libnm might
have bugs to make that really working, but that should be fixed
instead of adding such synchrnous API behavior.
Read also [1], for why blocking calls are wrong.
[1] https://smcv.pseudorandom.co.uk/2008/11/nonblocking/
So, all possible behaviors for synchronous API have severe behavioural
issues. Mark all this API as deprecated. Also, this serves the purpose of
identifying blocking D-Bus calls in libnm.
Note that "deprecated" here does not really mean that the API is going
to be removed. We don't break API. The user may:
- continue to use this API. It's deprecated, awkward and discouraged,
but if it works, by all means use it.
- use asynchronous API. That's the only sensible way to use D-Bus.
If libnm lacks a certain asynchronous counterpart, it should be
added.
- use GDBusConnection directly. There really isn't anything wrong
with D-Bus or GDBusConnection. This deprecated API is just a wrapper
around g_dbus_connection_call_sync(). You may call it directly
without feeling dirty.
---
The only other remainging API is the synchronous GInitable call for
NMClient. That is an entirely separate beast and not particularly
wrong (from an API point of view).
Note that synchronous API in NMSecretAgentOld, NMVpnPluginOld and
NMVpnServicePlugin as not deprecated here. These types are not part
of the D-Bus cache and while they have similar issues, it's less severe
because they have less state.
