ansys / ansys/api-eigen-example

vector serialization does not take into account endianness

Open
#53 4 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
C++ gRPC Python
Dominant language
Python
Stars
8
Forks
0
Avg merge
11h 54m
Merged PRs (30d)
10

Description

The [gRPC protocol is defined](https://github.com/ansys/api-eigen-example/blob/108085fcaa860a9d1e27abbdc561c160a98e09e3/src/ansys/eigen/protos/grpcdemo.proto#L21) as sending over the bytes of arrays directly, but does not take into account endianness. This means the protocol will fail spectacularly (type 3 error, bad data with no error) if the client and server machines have different native endianness.

https://github.com/ansys/api-eigen-example/blob/108085fcaa860a9d1e27abbdc561c160a98e09e3/src/ansys/eigen/cpp/grpc/client/src/GRPCClient.cpp#L499

https://github.com/ansys/api-eigen-example/blob/108085fcaa860a9d1e27abbdc561c160a98e09e3/src/ansys/eigen/python/grpc/client.py#L280

Unless there is another reason, I recommend using gRPC arrays instead of bytes. gRPC can handle this for us.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

Start with the referenced grpcdemo.proto definition and the serialization points in src/ansys/eigen/cpp/grpc/client/src/GRPCClient.cpp and src/ansys/eigen/python/grpc/client.py. Compare the current bytes-based representation with gRPC arrays and determine the cross-endianness behavior that must be preserved. Done means clients and servers with different native endianness exchange vector data without silent corruption.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
cpp, grpc, python
Domain
api, backend
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.