I think that this is a really nice improvement to externals. As discussed far in the past, writing a robust external node required a LOT of threading code to keep a handle on things -- the KD tree implementation I wrote in Java was almost 80% threading code [1]. Furthermore, the fact that it doesn't communicate over stdio should make it a lot easier to debug external processes, as it will be possible to send data directly to the external process when testing.
I'll be updating the externalJ library to the new paradigm in the next few weeks. All the best, ~ Christopher [1] http://compu.terlicio.us/code/externalj/ On Fri, Oct 1, 2010 at 15:43, Paul Davis <[email protected]>wrote: > Hey everyone, > > I've gone and implemented the two features discussed in [1] with the > goal of using them to replace the current _externals API. The code is > up at [2]. I'd like to get a couple people to build and run the tests > (./bootstrap && ./configure && make dev && make check) to make sure > everything is sane. Let me know if you have any comments or > suggestions. If a couple people report back with successful test runs > I'll probably push this to trunk in the next couple days barring > someone raising a serious objection. > > There's also a blog post at [3] that describes the current situation > with words and stuff. > > Paul Davis > > [1] > http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/couchdb-dev/201009.mbox/%[email protected]%3e > [2] http://github.com/davisp/couchdb/tree/new_externals > [3] http://davispj.com/2010/09/26/new-couchdb-externals-api.html >
