From: Christopher Allan Webber Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2016 16:00:35 +0000 (-0600) Subject: NEWS: Updating news to current 0.3.0 state. X-Git-Tag: v0.3.0~2 X-Git-Url: https://jxself.org/git/?p=8sync.git;a=commitdiff_plain;h=d1d7afdf6d10d021ea79755bb9d3808f67a1c959 NEWS: Updating news to current 0.3.0 state. * NEWS: New 0.3 section. --- diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS index d892e33..093d32a 100644 --- a/NEWS +++ b/NEWS @@ -8,6 +8,104 @@ : permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright notice : and this notice are preserved. +* 8sync 0.3 + +** 8sync now targets Guile 2.2, Guile 2.0 dropped + +In order to take advantage of Guile 2.2's suspendable ports facilities, +Guile 2.0 support has been dropped from 8sync. (The Guile 2.1.X series is +the Guile 2.2 preview series. A minimum of Guile 2.1.4 is required.) + +While this may make 8sync slightly harder to install before major free +software distributions catch up (Guix users should have no problem), there +are major benefits to be found as well; networked code will be +significantly easier to write. For more information, read on. + + +** Suspendable ports overhaul + +Previous 8sync networked code required hooking up a "port request" to the +scheduler, which would assign a port listening on a read or write event +with a callback. By making use of Guile 2.2's new [[https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/docs/master/guile.html/Non_002dBlocking-I_002fO.html][suspendable ports]] code, +network enabled code mostly is completely straightforward to write. If a +port is set to be nonblocking, attempting to read or write to a port that +would normally block will automatically suspend to 8sync's scheduler. When +that port is discovered to be ready to read or write, the agenda will +automatically resume the suspended code. As such, writing nonblocking code +looks almost exactly like writing blocking code in Guile... very little +extra work needs to be done. + +8sync's internal demos and subsystems have also been updated to this +feature. + +Not all ports will work with the new behavior, but most involving a file +descriptor will, which is the vast majority of I/O facilities. Hopefully +over time the range of ports which are available to take advantage of this +feature will grow. + +** Overhaul of the "8sync" and "8sync-*" macros / procedures + +The previous 8sync macro was realized to be a flawed design, more or less +emulating a synchronous call stack while providing the main feature of +yielding. Thus 8sync, and several related macros (8sync-run-at, 8sync-run, +8sync-delay, 8sync-run-delay) have been removed, and 8sync-nowait has been +renamed to 8sync. + +This leads to the question, "what is the primary coordination mechanism in +8sync between asynchronous processes?" At least for now, this is the actor +subystem. (While 8sync core continues to not require the actor subsystem, +for the reasons just described, many users will want to use it.) + +** Actor system overhaul + +Given its increased role in 8sync, the actor system has also received +several major updates: + +*** send-message and friends deprecated in favor of <- and friends + +send-message, send-message-wait, reply-message, and reply-message-wait have +all been removed in favor of what was previously their aliases: <-, <-wait, +<-reply, and <-reply-wait. The semantics are the same. + +*** Message body now "applied" to a procedure + +Previously to access a message body's contents, you used message-ref, +since a message body was merely a key-value property list. There was +a special purpose message handler to make accessing the contents of a +message's body easier, with define-mhandler. Now this is no more, +since invoking a message handler will call the procedure more or less +like so: + +#+BEGIN_SRC scheme +(apply this-message-handler actor message (message-body this-message)) +#+END_SRC + +"Waiting" for a reply message continues to return the message as +before, but to access its body, the message is likewise applied, using +either "receive-message" or "call-with-message". + +*** New %current-actor parameter + +*** Default message handler now "inheritable" + +The default message handler now looks at the actor slot of the actor +and its predecessors, which must have #:allocation #:class or +#:each-subclass. The #:init-value of the actor slot is just an alist +of (action-symbol . message-handler). There is convenient sugar for +defining this alist named "build-actions". Use it! + +If for some reason you want to control the way messages are handled +in some way that is different than the general pattern, you may +customize the message-handler slot of your actor. + +** New yield procedure + +Allows asynchronously executing code to voluntarily yield to the scheduler. + +** New procedure: 8usleep + +Like usleep, but asynchronous. + * 8sync 0.2 The primary update to this release is the inclusion of a new actor