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System/Library/Frameworks/amework/XPCServices/ System/Library/Frameworks/amework/XPCServices/CAReportingService.xpc System/Library/Frameworks/amework/XPCServices/RemoteProcessingBlockRegistrar.xpc System/Library/Frameworks/amework/Versions/A/XPCServices/.xpc $ find /System/Library/Frameworks -name "*.xpc" # a few results on my computer You can search in your /Applications directory and see how many of the applications rely on XPC Services. You'll find them inside the Contents/XPCServices/ directory inside the application bundle. If you right-click on any application (For example Chess.app) and select Show content, what you'll find is a directory structure.īack to XPC, applications can have may XPC Service bundles.
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The most common Bundle you encounter are Application Bundles. Bundles in Apple ecosystem refers to entities represented by a specific directory structure. When we talk about XPC Services (capital 'S'), we are referring to the bundle called XPC Service. The exchange of data in XPC is through Plists, that also allows for data type validation. XPC services used in this way are an excellent way to communicate different processes. We don't access the XPC service directly we use the API provided by amework, but the framework is based on XPC services. That example could very easily be an XPC service provided by AddressBook.app. The app provides an API that you could access from your applications and query for details on the user's contacts. Imagine we have an application that handles the user's contacts.
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We could have, for example, a process that acts as a "server" waiting for clients to access it's API and provide some service. We'll examine the benefits later but first, let's explore some use-cases of XPC.Īs mentioned before, the XPC mechanism offers an alternative to sockets (or Mach Services using MIG) for IPC. But aside from having an easier to use IPC mechanism, XPC implementation also gives us some additional benefits. XPC provides us with a new abstraction for Inter-Process-Communication, a simple abstraction that on its own it's convenient (using MIG is complicated).
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* You can check the full code in the GitHub Repository Let's examine what we can accomplish using XPC. Also, the services can be stopped if the OS needs more memory or if the process has been idle for an extended period. We can use XPC Services (Notice capital S) that provide services that will only be executed when needed. The application doesn't need to have that code always in memory, increasing the process' memory footprint. Imagine an app that has code dedicated to a specific task.
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How to use XPC in our applications to break it into small modules that provide services that can be requested only when needed.XPC, as you can imagine, is an excellent tool to learn. Also, Apple, in their code, has updated many of its frameworks, daemons and applications to use XPC. Nowadays, we are encouraged by Apple to use XPC in our applications and frameworks that provide services. Before XPC a common way to use IPC, and provide services between processes, was through Sockets or Mach Messages (Using Mach Ports). We have access to many Inter-Process-Communication(IPC) mechanisms in macOS. XPC Services on macOS apps using Swift Oct 17 2019