[erlang-questions] erl_interface shared libraries

[Taavi Talvik]

On Sep 8, 2007, at 8:00 PM, Mike Hales wrote:

> I am interested in using the erl_interface libraries to make a  
> Smalltalk virtual machine act as a C-node, for communicating with  
> other erlang processes.  The libraries generated when building  
> erlang are static libraries (ei.a and friends).  Has anybody out  
> there sucessfully compiled the erl_interface code as shared  
> libraries? It seems like it shouldn't be too difficult, but my  
> skills with gcc and make are only recently developing, maybe  
> someone else has a makefile to do this already?
>
> It would be easy to share a Smalltalk bridge if the erl_interface  
> could be linked dynamically to the Smalltalk virtual machine.   
> While linking statically is a possibility, compiling the Smalltalk  
> virtual machine from source is a much more difficult task and would  
> be a barrier to entry for many.  Any help, experience or pointers  
> would be greatly appreciated.  Initially I want to do this on  
> Linux, then eventually Windows and OSX too.

If you are well versed in Smalltalk, then probably one possibility is to
write naitive Smalltalk interface for Erlang.

Basicly there are only fiew tasks:
	1) encode/decode Erlang data types in external format
		(atom big bignum binary boolean char double
		fun intlist list_header long longlong pid port ref trace
		tuple_header  ulong ulonglong version)

	2) Create nodes, connections, communication with the other node etc.
	handle connection setup and authorization.

	3) Handle communication with epmd

	4) some higher level concepts like tracing, mapping processes, links
	to Smalltalk model.

If you start from 1) you are able to communicate to erlang with
via Port mechanisms over file descriptor.

best regards,
taavi