gRPC-D-Core

Purpose

This library is intended to provide better RPC support for the D Language (and provide interop with major systems), while being lightweight with little overhead.

Design Goals

• Utilize the metaprogramming facilities in the language to avoid massive hurdles that other languages have had to jump over (see C++, where the programming model is incredibly strange and foreign)
• Perform massive amounts of computation and generation at compile-time to avoid adding extra runtime complexity
• Heavily multithread service requests (to avoid the problem that Rust developers are currently facing)
• Make ease of use of the library a priority, not an after-thought.
• Reach performance that is near native C++ performance, but significantly easier to use.
• Avoid invoking the garbage collector as much as possible

Progress

IMPORTANT: As of current, the library is server-only. This will change in the future, and client functionality IS planned. Pre-alpha (until more extensive validation takes place)

Known quirks

• Compiling .proto files must be done with the custom compiler plugin here, rather then using the compiler plugin from protobuf-d
  • This is due to the compiler generating custom attributes that are not normally emitted (and handling the ServiceDescriptors)
• The library will spawn multiple workers (and, thus, multiple instances of a handler class)
  • This is normally not an issue with simple classes, however, if your class loads data from disk, this should be a consideration.
  • The worker value (for each call) will be tunable in future releases

Example applications

• grpc-demo: This program fully complies to the HelloWorld example contained within the gRPC source, and demonstrates the simplex performance of this library.
• grpc-route-guide: This program fully complies to the RouteGuide example contained within the gRPC source, and demonstrates how easy streaming is to take advantage of.

Planned features

• Document library (and code in it's entirety)
• Unit test functionality
• Optimize, optimize, optimize
• Implement the client interface
• Improve exception handling (currently it can lead to a segfault in rare occasions)
• channelz/reflection support
• Implement the server interface
• Enable compression/encrypted communication
• Allow for full server/client configuration (tuning via grpc_{channel,server}_args)