[erlang-questions] jinterface (was: otp.net)

[Vlad Dumitrescu]

Hi Serge,

On Sat, Oct 4, 2008 at 07:32, Serge Aleynikov <saleyn@REDACTED> wrote:
> I tried a similar test using jinterface to see if it's possible to
> monitor processes running on a Java node and ran into the same failure.

> (server@REDACTED)12> erlang:monitor(process, Pid).
> ** exception error: bad argument
>      in function  erlang:monitor/2
>         called as erlang:monitor(process,<5979.1.0>)

The documentation for erlang:monitor/2 says:

"If an attempt is made to monitor a process on an older node (where
remote process monitoring is not implemented or one where remote
process monitoring by registered name is not implemented), the call
fails with badarg. "

The Java nodes aren't implementing everything that an Erlang node
does, and I process monitoring is one of the things that is missing.
In Java it is quite dificult (IMO) to have an Erlang-like setup with
many mailboxes in separate threads. It gets hairy pretty fast. I am
using only two mailboxes and then it is good enough to do the
monitoring with erlang:monitor_node/1.

I was considering to implement this kind of features for Java nodes,
but never got enough time and motivation (you know, if it doesn't
itch, one doesn't have to scratch it :-)

regards,
Vlad