Protocols are nice, but there is no way for C code to verify whether
a type's "protocol" structure actually implements some particular
protocol. As a result, you can pass an object that implements the
"vfs" protocol to one that expects the "stream" protocol, and the
opposite of awesomeness ensues.
This patch adds an OPTIONAL (but enabled by default) protocol identifier
as the first member of any protocol structure. This identifier is
simply a unique QSTR chosen by the protocol designer and used by each
protocol implementer. When checking for protocol support, instead of
just checking whether the object's type has a non-NULL protocol field,
use `mp_proto_get` which implements the protocol check when possible.
The existing protocols are now named:
protocol_framebuf
protocol_i2c
protocol_pin
protocol_stream
protocol_spi
protocol_vfs
(most of these are unused in CP and are just inherited from MP; vfs and
stream are definitely used though)
I did not find any crashing examples, but here's one to give a flavor of what
is improved, using `micropython_coverage`. Before the change,
the vfs "ioctl" protocol is invoked, and the result is not intelligible
as json (but it could have resulted in a hard fault, potentially):
>>> import uos, ujson
>>> u = uos.VfsPosix('/tmp')
>>> ujson.load(u)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ValueError: syntax error in JSON
After the change, the vfs object is correctly detected as not supporting
the stream protocol:
>>> ujson.load(p)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
OSError: stream operation not supported
Using usual method of virtual method tables. Single virtual method,
ioctl, is defined currently for all operations. This universal and
extensible vtable-based method is also defined as a default MPHAL
GPIO implementation, but a specific port may override it with its
own implementation (e.g. close-ended, but very efficient, e.g. avoiding
virtual method dispatch).
Jeff Epler
Paul Sokolovsky