Support for non-global clients

[davidgengenbach]

As mentioned in the README, p4runtime-shell does not support controlling multiple switches at the same time.
Is there any work planned or interest to change that?

As far as I can see, the main change would be removing the dependence on the "singleton" instances: p4runtime_sh.shell.Client and p4runtime_sh.context.Context.

Since there is a lot of meta-programming involved (i.e., passing constructors around, creating class instances dynamically), this is not as straightforward as anticipated.

Apart from that: thanks for the library! Easy to use and apart from the single-switch limitation very useful.

[antoninbas]

@davidgengenbach thanks for the feedback. This was mostly used to be meant as an interactive shell, thus the single switch limitation. I agree that it would be nice to be able to support multiple devices when writing scripts, as the syntax for p4runtime-shell is pretty intuitive and concise. Especially if you need to program multiple switches with static entries in a symmetric fashion.

Another key item which is missing from p4runtime-shell is some form of support for P4Runtime stream messages. These days however I mostly dedicate my spare time to https://github.com/antoninbas/p4runtime-go-client.

If someone wants to pick up these work items, I am happy to review PRs.

[davidgengenbach]

@antoninbas Thanks for the fast answer!

I created a PR with my proposed changes: #50