rpcgen

NAME

rpcgen - a remote procedure call (RPC) protocol compiler

SYNOPSIS

rpcgen infile
rpcgen {-c|-h|-l|-m} [-o outfile] [infile]
rpcgen -s transport [ -o outfile] [infile]

DESCRIPTION

The rpcgen(1) utility is a tool that generates C code to implement an RPC protocol. The input to rpcgen is a language similar to C known as Remote Procedure Call Language (RPC Language).

The rpcgen utility is normally used as in the first synopsis where it takes an input file and generates four output files. If the infile is named proto.x, then rpcgen will generate a header file in proto.h, XDR routines in proto_xdr.c, server-side stubs in proto_svc.c, and client-side stubs in proto_clnt.c.

The other synopses shown above are used when one does not want to generate all the output files, but only a particular one. Their usage is described in the USAGE section below.

The C preprocessor, cpp(1), is run on all input files before they are actually interpreted by rpcgen, so all the cpp directives are legal within an rpcgen input file. For each type of output file, rpcgen defines a special cpp symbol for use by the rpcgen programmer:

RPC_HDR	defined when compiling into header files
RPC_XDR	defined when compiling into XDR routines
RPC_SVC	defined when compiling into server-side stubs
RPC_CLNT	defined when compiling into client-side stubs

In addition, rpcgen does a little preprocessing of its own. Any line beginning with a percent sign (%) is passed directly into the output file, uninterpreted by rpcgen.

You can customize some of your XDR routines by leaving those data types undefined. For every data type that is undefined, rpcgen will assume that there exists a routine with the name xdr_ prepended to the name of the undefined type.

OPTIONS

-c: Compile into XDR routines.
-h: Compile into C data definitions (a header file)
-l: Compile into client-side stubs.
-m: Compile into server-side stubs, but do not generate a "main" routine. This option is useful for doing callback routines and for people who need to write their own "main" routine to do initialization.
-o outfile: Specify the name of the output file. If none is specified, standard output is used (-c, -h, -l, -m and -s modes only).
-s transport: Compile into server-side stubs, using the given transport. The supported transports are udp and tcp. This option may be invoked more than once so as to compile a server that serves multiple transports.

BUGS

Nesting is not supported. As a workaround, structures can be declared at top-level, and their name used inside other structures in order to achieve the same effect.

Name clashes can occur when using program definitions, since the apparent scoping does not really apply. Most of these can be avoided by giving unique names for programs, versions, procedures and types.