[Haskell-beginners] Signals and external bindings...

[umptious]

>
>
>> What would happen if there was a Haskell process that ran as a
>> dispatcher/telephone exchange? If this received a message from a C process
>> and then sent the signal, wouldn't this work?
>>
>
> What problem do you think this is solving?  Because it isn't solving the
> problem with the Haskell runtime being unable to clean up the internal
> state of arbitrary C code, which is the reason C code is run the way it is
> by most other environments.
>
>
Well the OP wrote

>> Since my extensions are doing the heavy lifting, they
often run for long periods (by which I mean 10s of minutes). Meaning
the signal is ignored for long periods.<<

and you responded

>> Cross-runtime borders are *always* a problem for signals and various
resources that may need to be cleaned up. <<

So if both statements are true and non-misleading, a solution with a
dispatcher thread to catch messages would avoid this problem. Because there
would be no cross-runtime border for signals. And the dispatcher thread
could respond to messages immediately with "I'm taking responsibility for
this message now" possibily simplifying the C code.

Or the C code has to send signals, then wouldn't it be possible for a
dispatcher thread to catch them, and wouldn't that simplify architecture?

>>> Because it isn't solving the problem with the Haskell runtime being
unable to clean up the internal state of arbitrary C code, which is the
reason C code is run the way it is by most other environments.

Well, NOTHING Haskell could do could clean up after literally arbitrary C
code! But was the OP asking that question? It would seem a rather strange
one. I thought the problem was that additional complexity was being added
to said clean-up was coming from the very long time required to respond to
signals, and the OP was asking if there was anyway to avoid this - which is
a very different question.
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