MixinPipeline, or more generally ideas for structuring pipelines.

[rzo]

Hello,

with this post I would like to initiate a discussion on enhancements for 
pipeline.

Within my asynch hessian patch I have implemented a "MixinPipeline".
That is an implementation of a Pipeline, which allows to insert a 
pipeline or remove a pipeline
to/from an existing pipeline.

Another idea I had for the "WAF" example which I posted was to implement 
"parallel" pipelines.
eg the ability to send an incoming buffer along multiple parallel 
pipelines, synchronize their processing, etc.

I think that implementing generic methods/classes for this kind of 
operations would be great and will enable
to use building blocks within netty. It will also enable to use existing 
pipeline factories from other applications by
just combining them. Something in the line of:

bootstrap.addLastPipelineFactory("httpTunnelServerPipeline", ...)
bootstrap.addParallelPipelineFactory("httpTunnelServerPipeline", 
"wafPipeline", ...)
bootstrap.addLastPipelineFactory("asycHessianServerPipeline", ...)

What do you think ?

-- Ron