This has been an attempt to extend existing FileHandle to behave like POSIX
file descriptor for input/output resources/devices too.
This will now provide an abstract indicator/handle any arbitrary file or device
type resource. May be in future, sockets too.
In order to correctly detect availability of read/write a FileHandle, we needed
a select or poll mechanisms. We opted for poll as POSIX defines in
http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/poll.html Currently,
mbed::poll() just spins and scans filehandles looking for any events we are
interested in. In future, his spinning behaviour will be replaced with
condition variables.
In retarget.cpp we have introduced an mbed::fdopen() function which is
equivalent to C fdopen(). It attaches a std stream to our FileHandle stream.
newlib-nano somehow does not seem to call isatty() so retarget doesn't work for
device type file handles. We handle this by checking ourselves in
mbed::fdopen() if we wish to attach our stream to std stream. We also turn off
buffering by C library as our stuff will be buffered already.
sigio() is also provided, matching the API of the Socket class, with a view to
future unification. As well as unblocking poll(), _poll_change calls the user
sigio callback if an event happens, i.e., when FileHandle becomes
readable/writable.
Hasnain Virk