some more rambling on the new fe/be communication

it would appear that libpq now has a outgoing data buffer associated
with PGconn struct which only gets sent (with send()!?) when pqFlush
gets called. the backend still appears to use and pass FILE * for
reading and writing. I wasn't aware that you can read data from a
FILE * sent with send() over a socket. Is this portable? Time to
pull out stevens.

In any case, I don't think this bodes well for my SSL patch -- and I
think I've missed something -- why have we switched to send/recv? I
assume for the synchronous notification? I haven't been following
that discussion as much as I possibly could be, so I'll look in the
archives. Anyway, this is sort of a plea for help -- I'm totally
confused, so if there's just something I'm missing, please let me
know.

Does anyone know what implications the new communication scheme has
for SSL? I know this isn't a postgresql priority, but it is an
interest of mine. Is it still possible? I'll start doing my
homework.