i am going to make a proposal that we ('we' to be defined later) develop
a new common event loop with two major goals in mind:
1. the event loop should be fully portable over all modern unix OS's
and the win32 server flavors (nt, 2k).
2. be a test bed for perl6 language level event API and new features.
the first goal is to make it easier to port event loop based
applications and systems such as POE, perl/tk, perl/gtk and Stem. some
of these work ok under win32 and others don't. having a single event
loop we can all use and support would be very good for the perl
community.
the second goal is meant to help get some parts of perl6 internals
moving along. we have all agreed that perl6 will have an event loop
and/or event handling in the op dispatcher. here is a chance to work on
its perl level API (see RFC 350 for my proposed API), add new features
such as async file I/O (which has working but different system API's on
solaris, BSD* and win32), and learning about the portability issues.
because the API will be new and we will adding new features, i think
this is best done as a new module and not as a rewrite of Event.pm. but
that module's API had a strong influence on my RFC. also i think the
best implementation for it would be for most of it to be in perl with
inline C for the critical code such as signal handling and specialized
system calls (such as async file i/o). we can benchmark it later and
move any bottlenecks into inline c as well.
we have a mass of great event level talent around here. also all the
critical OS platforms are covered. this should not be a very difficult
project and i think the core of it could be done in a couple of months
by a smallish and focused team. adding the async file i/o stuff will be
the hardest part and may take some more time.
all the work done to support async file i/o can be transferred to
perl6. also the API will be tested and fine tuned so we gain that as
well. the module can't be directly used in perl6 as its event loop
support has to be more tightly integrated with the op dispatch loop.
so what are your thoughts? we can make up a new list
([EMAIL PROTECTED] ?) for this or even take over some defunct
perl6 list.
uri
--
Uri Guttman --------- [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---------- http://www.sysarch.com
SYStems ARCHitecture and Stem Development ------ http://www.stemsystems.com
Learn Advanced Object Oriented Perl from Damian Conway - Boston, July 10-11
Class and Registration info: http://www.sysarch.com/perl/OOP_class.html
