On Wednesday, April 11, 2012 9:54:01 PM UTC-4, Brooke wrote: > > This may seem naive, but what exactly does /dev/binder do?
It's the device file for accessing a kernel driver which provides a special inter-process communications scheme optimized for use by object-oriented languages and where efficiency is needed. Android uses it heavily for communication between applications and services and the platform. It helps with android's ability to give the impression of seamlessly passing objects and paths of execution between processes. It inherits from a more expansive scheme which some of the engineers who built Android created for some of their earlier projects. > Question I have is whats it doing, why is it needed, and why just Android > and not for normal Linux installs? > The later questions were debated on the linux kernel mailing list - some good arguments were made from the perspective of both sides, so it's worth looking up and reading. Android uses it because android was designed by people who were closely aware of it and felt it offered unique advantages. More traditional linuxes have instead chosen to rely on older and more widely known ipc mechanism and develop new ones that are more generic (but perhaps heavier) - android uses those too, but not as heavily as it uses binder. -- unsubscribe: android-kernel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com website: http://groups.google.com/group/android-kernel
