Question

Apologies if I’m missing something really obvious, but I’m trying to understand how to write a custom front end and back end with Pantheios. (I’m using it from C++, not C.)

I can follow the purposes of the initialisation functions (I think) but I’m unsure about the others: pantheios_be_logEntry, pantheios_fe_getProcessIdentity and pantheios_fe_isSeverityLogged.

In particular, I’m confused about the relationship between a front end and a back end. How do I make them communicate with each other?

Answer 1

Not sure I understand exactly what you don’t understand, but maybe that’s part of the problem. 😉 So I’ll try my best and you let me know whether it’s near or not.

pantheios_fe_getProcessIdentity() is called once, when Pantheios is initializing. You need to return a string that identifies the process. (Actually, it identifies the link-unit; a term defined in Imperfect C++, written by Pantheios’ creator, Matthew Wilson, which means the scope of link names, i.e. an executable program module or a dynamic library module.)

pantheios_fe_isSeverityLogged() is called whenever a log statement is executed in application code. It returns non-zero to indicate that the statement should be processed and sent to the output (via the back-end). If it returns zero, no processing occurs. FWIU, this is the main reason why Pantheios is so fast.

pantheios_be_logEntry() is called whenever a log statement is to be sent for output, when pantheios_fe_isSeverityLogged() has returned non-zero and the Pantheios core has processed the statement (forming all the arguments in your code into a single string). It sends the statement string to wherever it should go. For example, the be.fprintf back-end prints it to the console using fprint().

Once you grok these aspects, the second part of your question is where it gets interesting. When your front-end and back-end are initialized they get to create some context (e.g. a C++ object) that the Pantheios core holds for them, and gives them back each time it calls a front/back end API function. When you’re customizing both, you can have them communicate via some shared context that they both know about, but which the Pantheios core does not (and should not) know about, beyond having an opaque handle (void*) to it.

HTH