Re: Event-Oriented Computing

[Marcus G. Daniels]

>>>>> "GR" == glen e p ropella <address@hidden> writes:

GR> This would mean a) picking a line to draw in the tool chain (do we
GR> let agents have access to the OS, the GNU-specific functions, the
GR> ObjC infrastructure, etc),

The line would have to be above all those things, of course.  Agents
can't be allowed to run systems calls or directly or indirectly
control the program counter.  (Unless you have a workstation that's
not connected to the internet and you don't care if its files 
are lost.)

GR> b) abstracting the mechanisms we want
GR> to allow agents to use (like getClass, for example)

Yeah, abstracted, and then insulated behind IPC.

GR> and c)
GR> publishing a kind of discovery and lookup API for Swarm so that
GR> users can begin to use it. 

Besides the existing reflection interfaces: Zones and ProbeMaps, we're
starting work on a high-level directory assistance interface for
accessing objects across different address spaces.  This could either
be used with the existing Archiver (the class that associates names
with objects, for the purpose of freeze-drying or resuscitation), or
supplant it.

Further, it might be useful to make documentation markup in the Swarm
protocol files available through the same sort of database interface.
Unfortunately, the level of granularity in the markup doesn't really
say much more than would be evident from the ProbeMaps (although it
includes macros and functions, and some expected-type information),
and it doesn't try to be any sort of formal semantic data
representation; it's English.





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