<<../_v2_banner.md>>
This document describes the steps that occur when a component attempts to connect to a protocol in its namespace.
These steps apply to the components v2 model as run under component manager. Portions of it also apply to the components v1 model as run under appmgr.
At a high level these steps are:
use declarations in its manifest.Open request is received by component manager, which performs the capability routing necessary to find the component providing the protocol.Open request to itA namespace is a set of directories that are offered to a component when it is started. Each directory is associated with a file system path through which the component may access files and protocols offered by other components.
These directories take the form of handles to channels, over which the component can use the fuchsia.io.Directory FIDL protocol.
For example, all components will receive a handle to the contents of the package from which they were created at /pkg. This means that a component can see what binaries are available in their package by reading the contents of /pkg/bin.
The use declarations in the component's manifest determine how the namespace is populated. When a protocol capability is used...
use: [ { protocol: "fuchsia.example.Foo", }, ]
...component manager will add an entry to the component's namespace for the parent directory of the protocol. In this example, the namespace path of the protocol is /svc/fuchsia.example.Foo (the default path assignment), which means that component manager will add a handle for /svc to the namespace.
The /svc directory is provided by component manager itself, and component manager will respond to requests for protocols to this directory for the lifetime of the component.
The exact semantics of what appears in the namespace varies based on capability type. For example if a directory capability is used instead of the protocol capability...
"use": [ { directory: "example-data", rights: [ "r*" ], path: "/example/data", }, ]
...a handle for the directory itself appears in the namespace instead of a handle for the parent directory. In this example, this means that a handle for /example/data will appear in the namespace, whereas if this path was used for a protocol capability /example would appear in the namespace.
When a component wants to open a protocol it creates a new channel pair, and sends one end of this pair via an Open request over a channel in its namespace. For example, if the component wanted to open a connection to /svc/fuchsia.example.Foo, one end of the new channel pair would be sent over the /svc handle in its namespace. The component may then call the fuchsia.example.Foo protocol over the channel.
Since the directory containing the protocol (/svc) is provided by component manager, it is component manager that will receive the server end of the new channel via the Open request sent by the component. Component manager then must identify the component providing the protocol over this channel.
Open triggers capability routingTo determine the component that provides the protocol over the channel, component manager must walk the tree of components, following offer and expose declarations to find the capability's source. This process is referred to as capability routing.
Starting at the parent of the component that triggered the capability routing, component manager will inspect each component‘s manifest, looking for an offer declaration whose destination matches the child. The offer will specify a source of either parent, self, or the name of a child. If the offer came from the component’s realm it will continue to walk up the tree, and if the offer came from one of the component's children it will walk down the tree to that child.
Once the routing begins walking down the tree it will look for expose declarations, which will specify a source of either self or the name of a child. If the capability came from a child then component manager will continue to walk down the tree.
Once an offer or expose declaration with a source of self is found, then component manager can hand off the channel to that component.
If at any step of the way the chain is invalid, component manager will log an error and close the channel it received from the Open call. This can be caused by various situations, such as:
C offered a capability from parent, but its parent R did not offer the capability to C.C offered a capability from its child D, but child D did not expose the capability to C.For example, consider the following tree of components and their manifests (program blocks and runner setup omitted for brevity):
C
/ \
B D
/
A
A.cml:
{
// ...
capabilities: [
{
protocol: "fuchsia.example.Foo",
},
],
expose: [
{
protocol: "fuchsia.example.Foo",
from: "self",
},
],
}
B.cml:
{
// ...
expose: [
{
protocol: "fuchsia.example.Foo",
from: "#A",
},
],
children: [
{
name: "A",
url: "fuchsia-pkg://fuchsia.com/a#meta/a.cm",
},
]
}
C.cml:
{
// ...
offer: [
{
protocol: "fuchsia.example.Foo",
from: "#B",
to: [ "#D" ],
},
]
children: [
{
name: "B",
url: "fuchsia-pkg://fuchsia.com/b#meta/b.cm",
},
{
name: "D",
url: "fuchsia-pkg://fuchsia.com/d#meta/d.cm",
},
]
}
D.cml:
{
// ...
use: [
{
"protocol": "fuchsia.example.Foo",
},
],
}
When D calls Open on /svc/fuchsia.example.Foo in its namespace, component manager will walk the tree to find the component that should provide this protocol. It will start at D's parent, C, and from there:
offer declaration for fuchsia.example.Foo to D, and see that it comes from child B.expose declaration for fuchsia.example.Foo from B, and see that it comes from A.expose declaration for fuchsia.example.Foo from A, and see that it comes from self. This means that A is the component providing the capability that D is attempting to use.Now that the provider component has been found, component manager can attempt to hand off the channel it received via the Open request.
With the provider found the client component is now bound to the provider. This will cause the component to start running if it is currently stopped.
Every component upon being started receives a server handle to an outgoing directory in its handle table. When a component is bound to, component manager forwards the server end of the protocol channel to the providing component‘s outgoing directory, under the source path in the providing component’s offer or expose declaration
In the above example component manager will send an Open request over the outgoing directory handle for component A to the /svc/fuchsia.example.Foo path, providing the channel handle that it received from component D when it called Open to component manager.
It is then up to component A to receive this request and start responding to messages over the channel it was given.
Since component manager directly forwards the server end of the protocol channel to the provider component's outgoing directory, it is not involved in message proxying and is entirely out of the picture after capability routing is completed. Once a connection to another component is established, they talk directly to each other with no arbiter in the middle.
Due to the runtime nature of capability routing and the behavior of the components providing capabilities, there is no way to know if a given component can successfully access a capability in its namespace before it attempts to do so. Even if a valid offer/expose chain exists for the capability, package updates could break this chain at runtime, and it's entirely possible a component that claims to provide a capability in its manifest will fail to do so when run.
Some capabilities are provided by the component framework itself, and can be directly used by (or will be implicitly provided to) components without their parent offering these capabilities. Currently these are:
/pkg: a handle to the package from which the component was created./svc/fuchsia.sys2.Realm: a protocol which components can use to manage their own realm.use capabilities exposed to itParent components can access capabilities offered by their children at runtime by calling the fuchsia.sys2.Realm.BindChild method to start the child and receive a directory containing the child's exposed protocols.
To prevent dependency cycles from occurring in component namespaces, a parent component cannot declare a static dependency on the protocols of its children with use declarations; it must use BindChild().