/*******************************************************************************
* Copyright (c) 2009, 2013 Ericsson
*
* All rights reserved. This program and the accompanying materials are
* made available under the terms of the Eclipse Public License v1.0 which
* accompanies this distribution, and is available at
* http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html
*
* Contributors:
* Francois Chouinard - Initial API and implementation
* Francois Chouinard - Updated as per TMF Trace Model 1.0
*******************************************************************************/
package fr.inria.linuxtools.tmf.core.trace.location;
import java.nio.ByteBuffer;
/**
* The generic trace location in TMF.
* <p>
* An ITmfLocation is the equivalent of a random-access file position, holding
* enough information to allow the positioning of the trace 'pointer' to read an
* arbitrary event.
* <p>
* This location is trace-specific, must be comparable and immutable.
*
* @author Francois Chouinard
* @since 3.0
*/
public interface ITmfLocation {
// ------------------------------------------------------------------------
// Getters
// ------------------------------------------------------------------------
/**
* Returns the concrete trace location information
*
* @return the location information
* @since 2.0
*/
Comparable<?> getLocationInfo();
/**
* Write the location to the ByteBuffer so that it can be saved to disk.
* @param bufferOut the buffer to write to
*
* @since 3.0
*/
void serialize(ByteBuffer bufferOut);
}