[Bro-Dev] Plugins providing threads?

Robin Sommer robin at icir.org
Tue Oct 7 15:43:01 PDT 2014


I'm wondering if we should add another type of plugin component:
threads. This would be for functionality that's to run in parallel
with Bro's main thread, and communicate with it via message passing.

We have the structure for that in place already, logging and reading
are using it as already. But this would formalize the notion a bit
more directly that a plugin can provide a new thread, with its own
logic; and also extend the interface that it has available from inside
that thread (e.g., being able to raise events; have bif functions
that, when called, get passed through to the thread).

One use case is Christian's OpenFlow plugin: if we went the route of
integrating an external library for speaking OpenFlow directly, that
communication needs to be handled somewhere. Traditionally, that would
be an IOSource hooked into the main loop. The plugin model could
support that, too, but being able to fully decouple it inside its own
thread seems appealing.

Jon, how are you planing to integrate Broker into Bro? Would this help
there as well if you could just follow a similar structure with Broker
running inside its own thread?

Robin

-- 
Robin Sommer * Phone +1 (510) 722-6541 *     robin at icir.org
ICSI/LBNL    * Fax   +1 (510) 666-2956 * www.icir.org/robin


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