[zeromq-dev] IPC transport on Windows (was Re: zmq_req / zmq_rep topology)

Martin Lucina mato at kotelna.sk
Thu Mar 11 13:33:45 CET 2010


gdiethelm at dcv.cl said:
> From a previous mail exchange:
> 
> > > How about under Windows? Is ipc transport supported there? If yes, 
> > > what underlying IPC mechanism is used?
> >
> > No. Unfortunately, Windows have no POSIX-compliant IPC transport. You
> have > to use TCP loopback on Windows.
> 
> What about using Windows Pipes as the Windows IPC mechanism?
> 
> http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa365590%28VS.85%29.aspx

The problem on Windows is that sockets live in a separate "world" from
everything else. This means that select() on Windows can *only* be used to
poll for events on sockets, not on sockets and Named Pipes at the same
time.

This could probably be resolved by porting 0MQ to use
WaitForMultipleObjectsEx() and WSAEventSelect() on Win32 but that is a
significant amount of work for relatively little gain.

-mato



More information about the zeromq-dev mailing list