Hi Boost, Is anyone interested in a framework for asynchronous programming? This is based on the thinking contained in; * SDL (http://www.sdl-forum.org/SDL/index.htm) * Active Objects (http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~schmidt/PDF/Act-Obj.pdf) SDL is the ITU standard for specification of signaling systems. AO is a pattern for concurrent programming. These have been combined to create an environment where objects exchange messages, possibly between threads or even over networks. Objects are created simply; id = create<object_type>(); and once created, anything can be sent to it; send( anything, id ); The framework takes care of threading, network addresses, queueing, encoding and optimal I/O, as appropriate. Threads are equally simple to create; p = start<message_processor>(); and objects can be assigned to specific threads at creation time; id2 = create<object_type>( p ); A network server can be created as simply as; listen = create<socket_listen>(); server = create<socket_server<my_server> >(); service operational( "loopback:5500", server ); send( operational, listen ); Connecting is equally simple; connect = create<socket_connect>(); client = create<my_client>(); service operational( "localhost:5500", client ); send( operational, connect );
From that point on, client and server can exchange messages using the send primitive without any knowledge that messages are actually travelling across a network. There is in fact no difference between inter-thread messaging and inter-processes (i.e. for the application).
Feel free to poke around in the software at; http://groups.google.co.nz/group/pact-serialization/web I am interested in a Boost review of this library but suspect it is too large. It also overlaps with several existing boost components. But good to get further opinions. Cheers, Scott