[cap-talk] binder ipc

[Karp, Alan H]

Jed wrote:
> 
> I'll also note that I don't believe it's wise to consider reference count based garbage
> collection in object/capability systems as I've never heard of such a mechanism
> that could be used effectively in a distributed environment.  

We could do it in Client Utility because path based access let us maintain a local proxy for a remote reference.  When Alice delegated access to Bob, Alice's infrastructure set up a proxy to handle invocations on the delegated reference.  No matter how many times Bob delegated it to others, all invocations came to that proxy via Bob.  Hence, when Bob dropped the reference, all subsequent delegations of the reference were revoked.  As long as Bob's infrastructure informed Alice's proxy when Bob dropped the reference, local reference counting was correct for the distributed system.

________________________
Alan Karp
Principal Scientist
Virus Safe Computing Initiative
Hewlett-Packard Laboratories
1501 Page Mill Road
Palo Alto, CA 94304
(650) 857-3967, fax (650) 857-7029
http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Alan_Karp