[Haskell-cafe] Re: standard poll/select interface

[John Meacham]

On Wed, Feb 22, 2006 at 03:28:26PM +0300, bulat.ziganshin at gmail.com wrote:
> JM> Yeah, this is why I have held off on a specific design until we get a
> JM> better idea of what the new IO library will look like. I am thinking it
> JM> will have to involve some abstract event source type with primitive
> JM> routines for creating this type from things like handles,fds, or
> JM> anything else we might want to wait on. so it is system-extendable in
> JM> that sense in that implementations can just provide new event source
> JM> creation primitives.
> 
> i don't think that we need some fixed interface. it can be just
> parameterized:
> 
> type ReadBuf  h = h -> Ptr () -> Int -> IO Int
> type WriteBuf h = h -> Ptr () -> Int -> IO ()
> 
> so Unix implementations will use FD, Windows implementation will work
> with Handle and all will be happy :)

I think you misunderstand, the poll interface will need to accept a
_set_ of events to wait for. This is independent of the buffer interface
and lower level than async IO (for the traditional definition of async
IO). Not all event sources will necessarily be FDs on unix or handles on
windows, if say a haskell RTS integrates with a systems built in event
loop (such as the OSX example mentioned in another email).


> JM> The other advantage of this sort of thing is that you would want things
> JM> like the X11 library to be able to provide an event source for when an
> JM> X11 event is ready to be read so you can seamlessly integrate your X11
> JM> loop into your main one.
> 
> you don't need to have the same interface for the X11 and files async
> operations. The library can export "ReadBuf FD", "WriteBuf FD" and
> "X11Op" implementations and you will use each one in appropriate
> place.

You can't treat them as independent types at the poll site, since you
need to wait on a set of events from potentially different types of
sources.

> JM> The X11 library would create such an event source from the underlying
> JM> socket but just return the abstract event source so the implementation
> JM> can change (perhaps when using a shared memory based system like D11 for
> JM> instance) without affecting how the user uses the library in a portable
> JM> way.
> 
> JM> I will try to come up with something concrete for us to look at that we
> JM> can modify as the rest of the IO library congeals.
> 
> as i already said, this IO library will not emerge by itself :)  there
> is my library which use Stream class so it can accept any form of
> async library. there is a lib by Marcin Kowalczyk. and there is
> Einar's Alt-Network lib which already implements 2 async methods. so
> what we need is to convert Einar's work to single interface and make a
> Stream interface around this. the later will be better accomplished by
> me, but i don't know whether he planned to work on former. i can also
> do it, but without any testing because i still don't have any Unix
> installed :)  Streams library by itself is now unix-compilable, thanks
> to Peter Simons

I am not quite sure what you mean by this. the poll/select interface
will be lower level than your Streams library and fairly independent.
The async methods I have seen have been non-blocking based and tend to
be system dependent, which is different than what the poll/select
interface is about. the poll/select interface is about providing the
mininimum functionality to allow _portable_ async applications and
libraries to be written. 

        John

-- 
John Meacham - ⑆repetae.net⑆john⑈