Re: [boost] [rpc] Introducing Boost.Reflect, Boost.CMT, and Boost.RPC

Subject: Re: [boost] [rpc] Introducing Boost.Reflect, Boost.CMT, and Boost.RPC
From: Daniel Larimer (dlarimer_at_[hidden])
Date: 2011-07-30 16:36:12

On Jul 30, 2011, at 4:40 AM, Jose wrote:

> On Sat, Jul 30, 2011 at 5:08 AM, Daniel Larimer <dlarimer_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>>        I am torn about making boost::cmt depend upon boost::reflect vs introducing yet another library called boost::actor and then having
>> boost::rpc depend upon boost::actor.
> 
> Maybe you could have actor, rpc, cmt be part of concurrency toolkit ,
> much like asio does for async networking (reactor, proactor and async
> with threads).
> e.g. mpt for message passing toolkit
   Not a bad idea, but I like small, well-defined libraries as they are easier to review and
contain dependencies.  Perhaps the unified concept of 'message passing' where inter-thread, inter-process,
and inter-machine are all handled 'in the same way' could work.  

> I would assume with this library you could have the message passing
> programming benefits you get with Erlang.

Yes.   I have been using tools similar to these libraries (but not as clean or generic) and I can testify that
attempting to develop any application that deals with asynchronous events or multiple threads is greatly
enhanced and simplified by using CMT.

>> 
>> Awesome appears to provide stackless coroutines whereas CMT uses Boost.Context to provide a real stack per fiber.
> 
> Maybe your library should also provide both approaches. There are some
> important shortcomings for stackful coroutines. Can you comment on
> those ?

The main shortcoming is allocating stacks and actual context switching.  Using stackless solutions
requieres the user to manage their yield points.  I have developed code using stackless approach and
it helps, but does not solve the problem of ASIO callbacks happening in a separate thread and thus 
accessing shared state from an asio handler becomes problematic. 

> Many thanks for sharing your work
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