shared_memory_messenger

Shared Memory Messenger

A quick implementation of a messenger applied through shared memory objects.

Building your environment

Short way

It's recommended to run the code on its dedicated development environment, to build this environment start your Docker daemon (just start Docker) and run this script on the shared_memory_messenger/ directory:

./build.sh

Long way

You could also run the following commands inside the shared_memory_messenger/ directory and start your container manually, this is exactly what the build.sh script does:

docker image build --tag shm_example .
docker container run -it --rm shm_example

When you no longer want the image remove it with:

docker rmi shm_example

Run the code

Short way

Simply run ./run.sh on the shared_memory_messenger/ directory.

Long way

To compile the code you just need to run the following command inside the shared_memory_messenger/src/ directory:

make

Once you have the executable version run it with:

./messenger.exe ${BUFFER_SIZE}

Here the ${BUFFER_SIZE} parameter represents the maximum size any given message can have. The src files are spread all over the place to follow a modular architecture and follow what I currently consider best practices. When running the code from run.sh buffer size is set to 64 Bytes by default.

Teacher instructions

A small message service should be done using shared memory using shared memory objects.

• The name of the object is the conversation.
• The program should ask whether to read or write a message (or you can have a program for each thing).
• You must keep track of the messages read (which free memory) and messages left (consuming memory).
• To access shared memory, semaphores must be used.