[erlang-questions] Does Wx need smp??

[Angel]

El Lunes, 1 de Junio de 2009 07:36:45 Dan Gudmundsson escribió:
> The reason was speed, as it is an object oriented api I thought there
> would be a lot of queries to the driver/port program.
> 
> A GS was bashed a lot previously so I thought that we make it as fast as possible
> from the beginning.
> 
> Maybe that wasn't the best decision?
> 
> /Dan

Well, from the novice point of view,  I have seen many times in this list that raw speed is a very questionable concept
because being fast doesnt mean scale better. Erlang itself is very devoted to scale causing confusión and horror
to people on the first time when you see so much copying to allow nthe non destructive model and mesage passing.

For one scenario (a single nodel) a built-in driver maybe optimal, maybe not,  Windows seems to be the case here for 
speed (most stuff in kernel) whereas X in the oposite shows you can make GUI over a wire protocol and let nasty things 
(as masive opengl and the like transfers) to pluging or extensions (XVIDEO...) where tricky things can be done (IPC via 
shared segments and other things).


The whole system often is so much complex to be achieved using only one paradigm (funtional, process, threads, oop ...)

Despite those things wxerlang seems pretty interesting and a very good stating point for erlang going into the desktop..

/Angel
> 
> clist wrote:
> > well smp is nearly mainsteam today i know.
> >  
> > yet i still dont know what was the key on becoming a driver from a port program as early
> > wxerlang (thesis code) seemed to be standalone
> >  
> > /angel
> > 
> > ________________________________
> > 
> > De: Dan Gudmundsson [mailto:dgud@REDACTED]
> > Enviado el: vie 29/05/2009 10:52
> > Para: clist
> > CC: erlang-questions@REDACTED
> > Asunto: Re: [erlang-questions] Does Wx need smp??
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > wxWidgets must run in it's own thread, and the functions used in erlang driver interface
> > to communicate with the emulator is only thread safe in an smp emulator.
> > 
> > With some work you could wrap that functionality, send it to the erlang thread first and
> > call the functions from the emulator thread on an non smp enabled erlang.
> > 
> > But that is work that I don't have time with and nowadays smp machines are everywhere,
> > e.g. my 6 year old PC is hyperthreaded and seen as an smp machine.
> > 
> > /Dan
> > 
> > Angel Alvarez wrote:
> >> El Martes, 26 de Mayo de 2009 Steve Davis escribió:
> >>> Hello Angel,
> >>>
> >>> Yep, wx does require SMP, the reason being that the underlying (cpp)
> >>> library code is required to run in a separate OS thread.
> >>>
> >>> The erl flag you want is -smp enable. If running under windows you
> >>> must use werl not erl.
> >>>
> >>> To be fair, after taking a quick look at the official docs (both user
> >>> guide and ref manual), this requirement is far from clear.
> >>>
> >>> /s
> >> Sorry, my fault!
> >>
> >> Niko (the packager whose rpm i picked up ) told me that, i wanted to just to probe new features
> >> so basically i ignored the docs....(like a good newbie  :-)  )
> >>
> >> IMHO this is not very elegant as the purity of process isolation is gone.
> >>
> >> Was performance the key on introducing such a complex driver? im very new
> >> to just make this judgement but for the whole thing (minus opengl and the like)
> >> it seems enough a stdin/pipe interface than making a big driver.
> >>
> >> Perhaps memory conservation is another issue (well is erlang VM better at managing
> >> memory than a full blow C++ aplication??? ).
> >>
> >> Just checking
> >> http://apps.sourceforge.net/mediawiki/wxerlang/index.php?title=Memory_management
> >>
> >> shows a bif efort to catch deleted objects and try to be in sync with the pure erlang side...
> >>
> >>
> >> its not criticism, but mere curiosity, design questions are very educative.
> >>
> >> Regards, Angel
> >>
> >> PS: Ive just found http://wxerlang.sourceforge.net/docs/Report.pdf seems very promising for insigths..!
> > 
> > 
> 



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Clist UAH a.k.a Angel
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