[Boost-users] beginner boost::statechart questions

Subject: [Boost-users] beginner boost::statechart questions
From: Bedeho Mender (bedeho.mender_at_[hidden])
Date: 2016-11-20 03:08:19

Hi,

I have a few questions about the statechart library.

1) I would like to pass around a representation of the current
configuration of a machine, to allow inspection of local variables and
active states. The easiest approach would be to just pass around a copy of
the machine, but this is not possible since the state_machine class is
noncopyable. An alternative could have been to pass around a constant
ref/ptr to the machine, but this is also not workable because the
inspection will happen in another thread, and synchronisation is not
feasible.

Any suggestions?

One alternative is to create a new snapshot representation, but it will be
a headache to keep in synch with the primary machine.

2) A related question is whether there is a good way to start a machine in
a given configuration?

Using a sequence of events works in principle, but its a very impractical
way to do so. For example if one wishes to restore a configuration from a
prior session, then the client code has to log the full event history, and
it may have a very hard time determining how many events need to be logged
to reconstruct the given configuration. Logging and storing *all* events
from the prior session will in many cases be wasteful, or even infeasible.

3) Suppose a machine makes a certain callback to client code in a set of
different reactions. It would be nice if the client could inspect the
currently active state, from which the given reaction is originating.
However, my understanding is that the machine is unstable when processing a
reaction, hence this is not possible. Is there a way around this?

Best
 Bedeho Mender
ᐧ