Extending Erlang

[Vlad Dumitrescu (EAW)]

> |> > (PS. yes, I know, you are about to mention linked-in 
> drivers.....)
> |> 
> |> :-) and what's you reply to that?
> 
> See Ulf Wiger's answer :-). 

Well, I think it is a reasonable answer. Not that I like it :-) but I see the point.
 
> But are there any cases where C processes in the VM are 
> necessary? 

Not anymore than linked-in drivers.

Now I just got another idea, that might be a better one :-)

* We have pipe drivers and linked-in drivers. Then there is IC that mostly supports Corba, but even plain Erlang. What I'd like to propose is "TCP/IP drivers" whose stub implementation can be generated from IDL specs. They would also use gen_tcp and communicate using UBF or whatever, without Corba. One would however have to write stub templates for each {language, network library} combination...

Most of the infrastructure exists and it might even be possible to ise IC for regular drivers?

Not to diminish the Erlang Driver Toolkit's value, but the two tools want to do the same thing, in principle. I don't think an IDL specification is too restrictive, but for this particular purpose we could tweak it to use Erlang types if needed.

Does it sound too provocative again? ;-) 

regards,
Vlad