FW: [Felix-language] Re: Erlang?

[Ulf Wiger (AL/EAB)]

John Skaller is thinking about using Erlang to improve
the build and test environment for felix. I forward
it to the list thinking that it might tickle someone's
fancy. It doesn't sound terribly different from the 
challenge of building and testing OTP, right ?

(Not Cc:ing the felix-language list. Cross-posting 
across mailing lists seems a bit absurd...)

Regards,
Ulf W

-----Original Message-----
From: skaller [mailto:skaller@REDACTED] 
Sent: den 20 februari 2006 10:18
To: Ulf Wiger (AL/EAB)
Cc: felix-language@REDACTED
Subject: RE: [Felix-language] Re: Erlang?

On Fri, 2006-02-17 at 10:56 +0100, Ulf Wiger (AL/EAB) wrote:

Re Erlang: there is a possible use for Erlang building Felix, unrelated
to previous discussions of embedding.

At present, Felix defines FOUR platforms:

BUILD -- platform you build from source on HOST -- platform you program
Felix on, run Felix compiler here TARGET -- platform you compiled
generated C++ on RUN -- platform you run compiled C++ on

All four platforms can be distinct. A platform is an environment -- a
particular computer, a particular OS, particular toolchain. For example
we can have

BUILD=HOST= Cygwin, TARGET=RUN=Windows

where it is the same box, but distinct platforms.
But they could be four distinct machines.

One consequence is that building the system can be tricky, in
particular, it is impossible to run the regression tests if you are, for
example, cross compiling on Linux for MinGW target.

It is also hard to configure -- the build machine needs to get
information about the run machine configuration .. :)

So the developers need to test on multiple platforms and mess about
quite a bit. We could use RPC and ssh or something to compile on one
platform and build on another, but it is all very messy.

A clean solution -- Erlang nodes.

The hard part here is defered operation. Some nodes may be down, and we
still need to communicate with them. That happens all the time when dual
booting. So we'd need some 'relay'
nodes to buffer things I guess.

This is basically a standard workflow problem.
I imagine Erlang is well suited to this kind of problem domain.


--
John Skaller <skaller at users dot sf dot net> Felix, successor to C++:
http://felix.sf.net