Re: [PoC] Federated Authn/z with OAUTHBEARER - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

On Wed, Jul 5, 2023 at 3:07 PM Thomas Munro <thomas.munro@gmail.com> wrote:
> I guess there are a couple of ways to do it if we give up the goal of
> no-code-change-for-the-client:
>
> 1.  Generalised PQsocket(), that so that a client can call something like:
>
> int PQpollset(const PGConn *conn, struct pollfd fds[], int fds_size,
> int *nfds, int *timeout_ms);
>
> That way, libpq could tell you about which events it would like to
> wait for on which fds, and when it would like you to call it back due
> to timeout, and you can either pass that information directly to
> poll() or WSAPoll() or some equivalent interface (we don't care, we
> just gave you the info you need), or combine it in obvious ways with
> whatever else you want to multiplex with in your client program.

I absolutely wanted something like this while I was writing the code
(it would have made things much easier), but I'd feel bad adding that
much complexity to the API if the vast majority of connections use
exactly one socket. Are there other use cases in libpq where you think
this expanded API could be useful? Maybe to lift some of the existing
restrictions for PQconnectPoll(), add async DNS resolution, or
something?

Couple complications I can think of at the moment:
1. Clients using persistent pollsets will have to remove old
descriptors, presumably by tracking the delta since the last call,
which might make for a rough transition. Bookkeeping bugs probably
wouldn't show up unless they used OAuth in their test suites. With the
current model, that's more hidden and libpq takes responsibility for
getting it right.
2. In the future, we might need to think carefully around situations
where we want multiple PGConn handles to share descriptors (e.g.
multiplexed backend connections). I avoid tricky questions at the
moment by assigning only one connection per multi pool.

> 2.  Convert those events into new libpq events like 'I want you to
> call me back in 100ms', and 'call me back when socket #42 has data',
> and let clients handle that by managing their own poll set etc.  (This
> is something I've speculated about to support more efficient
> postgres_fdw shard query multiplexing; gotta figure out how to get
> multiple connections' events into one WaitEventSet...)

Something analogous to libcurl's socket and timeout callbacks [1],
then? Or is there an existing libpq API you were thinking about using?

> I guess there is a practical middle ground where client code on
> systems that have epoll/kqueue can use OAUTHBEARER without any code
> change, and the feature is available on other systems too but you'll
> have to change your client code to use one of those interfaces or else
> you get an error 'coz we just can't do it.

That's a possibility -- if your platform is able to do it nicely,
might as well use it. (In a similar vein, I'd personally vote against
having every platform use a background thread, even if we decided to
implement it for Windows.)

> Or, more likely in the
> first version, you just can't do it at all...  Doesn't seem that bad
> to me.

Any initial opinions on whether it's worse or better than a worker thread?

> BTW I will happily do the epoll->kqueue port work if necessary.

And I will happily take you up on that; thanks!

--Jacob

[1] https://curl.se/libcurl/c/CURLMOPT_SOCKETFUNCTION.html