[erlang-questions] pg2 vs gproc?

[Ulf Wiger]

Yes, this is correct.

Gproc supports a few different types of register entries:

- names, which are unique (can be any term)
- properties, which can be held by multiple processes simultaneously
- counters, which are properties with update_counter() semantics
- aggregate counters, which maintain the sum of all counters with
  the same name as the aggregate counter.

Properties are very useful for pub-sub, but also for highlighting various characteristics of the process. In my initial presentation of gproc, I had integrated it into OTP and modified the behaviors to register a {p,l,{behaviour,B}} property. This way, you could easily query the system for a certain type of behavior, and drill further to inspect other things.

(This had the unfortunate side-effect that many thought you had to have a patched OTP to use gproc. Next time, I will try to be smarter).

Thus, if you inspect a process, either with gproc:i(), or gproc:info(Pid [, gproc]), you can easily tell from its registered names and properties quite a bit about the process.

BTW, I've been thinking about adding a function, gproc:bcast(Key, Msg), which would be similar to:

rpc:abcast(gproc, send, [Key, Msg])

but with more predictable sequencing behavior, most likely making use of a gproc_bcast server to make sure all messages go the same way.

Wild cheers and enthusiasm may intice me to do it sooner rather than later…. ;-)

BR,
Ulf W

On 6 Jun 2012, at 14:50, Eric Moritz wrote:

> Yes, if you register a property key, you can retrieve all the procs that have that property set.  For instance a fanout pub/sub can be accomplished doing:
> 
> subscribe(Channel) ->
>     gproc:reg({p, l, {subscribers,
>                                Channel}}).
> 
> publish(Channel, Msg) ->
>     gproc:send({p, l, {subscribers,
>                                   Channel}},
>                          Msg).
> 
> If a process calls publish/2, the message will be sent to every process that called subscribe/1.
> 
> I'm on my phone so it's a bit hard to look up the details, if you want to get a list of pids that called subscribe, look at the code of gproc:send/2.  I think the function is called lookup_pids/1 but I may be wrong.
> 
> The etorrent project uses gproc.  That's a good read if you want to see how to use gproc.  He uses property keys for each torrent file process as well as using await to delay initialization of gen_servers that depend on other gen_servers.
> Eric Moritz.
> On Jun 6, 2012 8:27 AM, "Loïc Hoguin" <essen@REDACTED> wrote:
> On 05/26/2012 10:38 PM, Motiejus Jakštys wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Hello,
> 
> For term() to pid() mapping I've always used gproc. For the same thing
> my coworker always used pg2.
> 
> I am making a comparison now. There are some features in gproc which are
> not in pg2:
> 
> * Await for registration
> * Per-process properties
> * Aggregate counters
> * QLC
> 
> Whereas pg2 "natively" supports mapping one key to several processes
> (which can be easily achieved with QLC in gproc).
> 
> Unless I misunderstand, gproc's properties are exactly this, mapping one key to several processes.
> 
> -- 
> Loïc Hoguin
> Erlang Cowboy
> Nine Nines
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Ulf Wiger, Co-founder & Developer Advocate, Feuerlabs Inc.
http://feuerlabs.com



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