[erlang-questions] supervisor started from gen_server

[Mazen Harake]

Correct.

A Bot (in this case) is seen as an extension of the client. Thus if the bot
(which by implication is the client) is misbehaving or enters a faulty state
the client crashes. The result of this is that the client is restarted (and
the corresponding bots are reset).

/M

On 20 May 2011 14:19, Ahmed Omar <spawn.think@REDACTED> wrote:

> Hi Mazen ,
>
> One question rises here about this. What happens when the processes under
> that supervisor reach the maximum number of restarts, and the supervisor is
> terminated. In a "traditional" supervision tree, the higher level supervisor
> shall react to that. In your case, it will be the gen_server which i imagine
> will crash then?
>
> On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 2:00 PM, Mazen Harake <mazen.harake@REDACTED>wrote:
>
>> Of course you *can* but the point I'm trying to make is that it's not
>> "wrong" to do it like I did and it doesn't break OTP behaviour and is
>> actually convenient. Doing it like I did eliminates all the clean up code I
>> have to make when starting and stopping when the supervisor is "parallel"
>> rather than "under" my client process.
>>
>> As I said, in general you wouldn't want to do it like that but you *can*
>> and it isn't *wrong* and it isn't a *hack*. The Erlang documentation doesn't
>> (AFAIK) bring up this scenario but it doesn't make it less useful.
>>
>> That is all.
>>
>>
>> On 20 May 2011 13:52, Kannan <vasdeveloper@REDACTED> wrote:
>>
>>> Mazen,
>>>
>>> You can do the same thing with simple_one_for_one supervisors,
>>> one_for_all supervisors and one_for_one supervisors stacked in different
>>> levels.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 2:55 PM, Mazen Harake <mazen.harake@REDACTED>wrote:
>>>
>>>> I don't agree with the "never" part. There are corner cases and I would,
>>>> in general, absolutely agree with what you wrote but here is one example of
>>>> an exception.
>>>>
>>>> In my IRC library (https://github.com/mazenharake/eirc) I have the
>>>> following scenario:
>>>>
>>>> One can create 1..n clients. Each client is a process (running a
>>>> gen_server in eirc_cl.erl). A client can have many processes associated with
>>>> it, in my case these are called Bots. Each bot is started and supervised by
>>>> a client. A bot shall not terminate unless told to do so (gracefully) or if
>>>> the parent dies (i.e the client). Now if I manually start a supervisor
>>>> instance inside the gen_server I can simply make use of the supervisor
>>>> functionality without handling any of that in my gen_server. I can add and
>>>> remove children (bots) dynamically from my supervisor I.e. I don't have to
>>>> maintain my own list of them and when I (the client) exits my children (I.e.
>>>> the supervisor) will exit and thus my bots will exit... all according to OTP
>>>> principals and I don't need to catch exit signals. This makes it REALLY easy
>>>> to clean up things since all I have to do is to close the client process,
>>>> the client process doesn't even need logic in the terminate callback since
>>>> the children will exit with the same reason. If my supervisor was "on the
>>>> outside" (like you suggest and which it normally is) I would have to make
>>>> sure to clean up after myself with the supervisor.
>>>>
>>>> So it is much simpler (from an isolation point of view) to (in my case)
>>>> start a supervisor Inside the gen_server.
>>>>
>>>> never say never ;)
>>>>
>>>> /M
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 18 May 2011 14:13, Vance Shipley <vances@REDACTED> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 11:38:50AM +0200, Roberto Ostinelli wrote:
>>>>> }  just a quick question: can you think of any case in which starting a
>>>>> }  supervisor from a gen_server would actually be a perfectly fit idea?
>>>>>
>>>>> Never.
>>>>>
>>>>>                      +---------+
>>>>>                      | foo_sup |
>>>>>                      +-+-----+-+
>>>>>                       /       \
>>>>>           +----------+--+   +--+---------+
>>>>>           | bar_sup_sup |   | foo_server |
>>>>>           +---+---------+   +------------+
>>>>>               |
>>>>>          +----+----+
>>>>>          | bar_sup |
>>>>>          +---------+
>>>>>
>>>>> Start a supervisor for the new dynamic supervisor(s) and use
>>>>> supervisor:start_child/2 from the gen_server to start it.
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>>         -Vance
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>>>>
>>>>
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>>>
>>
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>
>
> --
> Best Regards,
> - Ahmed Omar
> http://nl.linkedin.com/in/adiaa
> Follow me on twitter
> @spawn_think <http://twitter.com/#%21/spawn_think>
>
>
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