This is the companion to the BinarySink system I introduced a couple
of weeks ago, and provides the same type-genericity which will let me
use the same get_* routines on an SSH packet, an SFTP packet or
anything else that chooses to include an implementing substructure.
However, unlike BinarySink which contained a (one-function) vtable,
BinarySource contains only mutable data fields - so another thing you
might very well want to do is to simply instantiate a bare one without
any containing object at all. I couldn't quite coerce C into letting
me use the same setup macro in both cases, so I've arranged a
BinarySource_INIT you can use on larger implementing objects and a
BinarySource_BARE_INIT you can use on a BinarySource not contained in
anything.
The API follows the general principle that even if decoding fails, the
decode functions will always return _some_ kind of value, with the
same dynamically-allocated-ness they would have used for a completely
successful value. But they also set an error flag in the BinarySource
which can be tested later. So instead of having to decode a 10-field
packet by means of 10 separate 'if (!get_foo(src)) throw error'
clauses, you can just write 10 'variable = get_foo(src)' statements
followed by a single check of get_err(src), and if the error check
fails, you have to do exactly the same set of frees you would have
after a successful decode.
I've finally got tired of all the code throughout PuTTY that repeats
the same logic about how to format the SSH binary primitives like
uint32, string, mpint. We've got reasonably organised code in ssh.c
that appends things like that to 'struct Packet'; something similar in
sftp.c which repeats a lot of the work; utility functions in various
places to format an mpint to feed to one or another hash function; and
no end of totally ad-hoc stuff in functions like public key blob
formatters which actually have to _count up_ the size of data
painstakingly, then malloc exactly that much and mess about with
PUT_32BIT.
It's time to bring all of that into one place, and stop repeating
myself in error-prone ways everywhere. The new marshal.h defines a
system in which I centralise all the actual marshalling functions, and
then layer a touch of C macro trickery on top to allow me to (look as
if I) pass a wide range of different types to those functions, as long
as the target type has been set up in the right way to have a write()
function.
This commit adds the new header and source file, and sets up some
general centralised types (strbuf and the various hash-function
contexts like SHA_State), but doesn't use the new calls for anything
yet.
(I've also renamed some internal functions in import.c which were
using the same names that I've just defined macros over. That won't
last long - those functions are going to go away soon, so the changed
names are strictly temporary.)
Simon Tatham
Owen Dunn
Ben Harris