[Xorp-hackers] FEA: Difference in _live_config v/s _pulled_config

[Pavlin Radoslavov]

Ben Greear <greearb at candelatech.com> wrote:

> Pavlin Radoslavov wrote:
> > Ben Greear <greearb at candelatech.com> wrote:
> >
> >   
> >> It seems to me that these two have significant overlap in
> >> meaning and perhaps could be consolidated?
> >>
> >> Why do we have both of them?
> >>     
> >
> > Conceptually they are populated using different mechanisms, but
> > pragmatically they should contain same information.
> >
> > The _live_config IfTree is populated/updated asynchronously by the
> > IfConfig Observer that tracks the kernel upcalls.
> > The _pulled_config is populated on demand (explicitly) by the
> > pull_config() method.
> > In other words, _live_config is a moving target, while
> > _pulled_config is a snapshot.
> >   
> I merged these, and it seems to work fine.  Eventually, that might be a 
> good way
> to get rid of some many pull_config() calls as well.  I can't think of 
> any reason why
> we'd ever *want* pulled_config to get stale, so letting observer update 
> it seems
> valid.  Maybe I'm missing something?

At the high level, _pulled_config is used for synchronous purpose,
while the _live_config is used for asyncronous purpose.

However, just can't just get rid of pulled_config:

* The Observer mechanism doesn't always exist (e.g., Windows).

* In some cases (like when committing the interface
  configuration), in the middle of the commit we need to
  synchronously pull the interface configuration from the kernel
  (e.g., to fill-in kernel generated information such as the
  physical interface index).
  The Observer is asynchronous so we can't use it for the synchronous
  population of _pull_config.

Hope that helps,
Pavlin