Re: [PATCH nft 3/3] src: add nft_ctx_netlink_init()

[Phil Sutter <phil@nwl.cc>]

Hi Pablo,

On Fri, Sep 01, 2017 at 12:17:33PM +0200, Pablo Neira Ayuso wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 01, 2017 at 12:14:07PM +0200, Pablo Neira Ayuso wrote:
> > Add these two new functions to set up netlink sockets in the global
> > context structure.
> 
> We can alternatively call this nft_ctx_netlink_auto() if prefer.
> 
> I'm just trying to skip the type/flag field for nft_ctx_alloc().
> 
> Does this look acceptable to you to have this extra API to request
> libnftables to deal with IO details too?

I think we could do it in a simpler way:

| /* create an mnl netlink socket object */
| struct mnl_socket *netlink_open_sock(void);
| 
| /* create nft context, optionally passing mnl socket object returned
|  * from netlink_open_sock()
|  * Calling nft_ctx_new(NULL) is equivalent to calling
|  * nft_ctx_new(netlink_open_sock())
|  */
| static struct nft_ctx *nft_ctx_new(struct mnl_socket *nf_sock);

This way we allow the application to control mnl_socket object, provide
a simple API for applications which don't need that and at the same time
always have ctx->nf_sock point to the socket so we can further simplify
things.

What do you think?

Cheers, Phil