Re: First timer on cooperative multitasking

[Gaspard Bucher <gaspard@...>]

The bindings and libraries provided by lubyk would seem to be a good choice. I have been running apps (single lua state) with GUI callbacks (OpenGL), Wiimote data (bluetooth based serial com) and sockets, all in the same script.

In lubyk you have:

lk.Thread (OS threads, will ask for global lock when entering lua)

lk.Socket (releases lock on accept/recv)

zmq.Socket (releases lock on recv/send/etc)

The whole library is meant to run on Mac/Linux/Windows. A subset (no huge math lib, no graphical interface) will run in embedded linux. Some other objects that could be interesting:

mimas (Qt bindings)

cv (OpenCV bindings)

mdns (Zeroconf/Bonjour)

wii (Wiimote)

db.Stream (Simple multitrack recorder/playback based on sqlite3)

etc

When you want many Lua states eventually distributed across many physical boxes collaborating (this is the goal in Lubyk), you use zmq:

push = zmq.Push()

print(push:port())

push:send('hello', {a=1, b='more'})

----- other thread

pull1 = zmq.SimplePull('tcp://1.2.3.4:4545', function(...)

  -- do something with the messages

end)

And then, when you no longer want to deal with IP and ports, you use mdns with lk.Service:

bob = lk.Service('Bob')

bob:notify('hello', {a=2, b='again'})

---- other thread/box

mary = lk.Client(function(...)

  -- do something with the messages

end)

mary:subscribe('Bob')

---------

This is very resilient: you can restart any of these two beasts and it will reconnect.

Lubyk has still a long way to go and some things are currently broken (mimas due to a massive rewrite of the callback architecture in Qt bindings) but most of these lower level things already work pretty well, at least on Mac OS X.

Gaspard

[1] http://lubyk.org

[2] http://github.com/lubyk/lubyk

On Sat, Aug 27, 2011 at 8:22 PM, Thijs Schreijer <thijs@thijsschreijer.nl> wrote:

Hi Stefan,

>
> Lua Lanes seems very neat for true multithreading. It separates each
> thread ("lane")'s data from the other threads' data. So you don't get
> the problems of a shared mutable state.
>

The lanes support states;

"Lua Lanes supports the following operating systems:
 - Mac OS X PowerPC / Intel (10.4 and later)
 - Linux x86
 - Windows 2000/XP and later (MinGW or Visual C++ 2005/2008)
The underlying threading code can be compiled either towards Win32 API or
Pthreads. Unfortunately, thread prioritation under Pthreads is a JOKE,
requiring OS specific tweaks and guessing undocumented behaviour. Other
features should be portable to any modern platform."


I intended to use it on embedded linux on ARM architectures, would that
qualify as "any modern platform"? (sorry for the probably stupid question,
but I'm a total noob on this stuff)

Regards,
Thijs

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                                                               Gaspard