[Caml-list] [ANN] Procord 0.1.0: Delegate tasks to other processes

[Caml-list] [ANN] Procord 0.1.0: Delegate tasks to other processes

[Romain Bardou]

I am happy to announce the first release of Procord, a portable library
to delegate tasks to other processes.

Obtain it with opam:

  opam install procord

Or, download the tarball:

  https://github.com/cryptosense/procord/archive/v0.1.0.tar.gz

View a minimal, commented example:

  https://github.com/cryptosense/procord/blob/master/examples/minimal.ml

You can browse the API at:

  http://cryptosense.github.io/procord/api/index.html

Procord can spawn local worker processes or communicate using sockets to
a remote worker server. Workers will receive an input, execute a
function on this input, and send back the result. Meanwhile, the main
program can continue to run while waiting for the results.

Not relying on threads, Procord is robust - a segmentation fault in the
worker will not kill the main program. Not relying on fork, Procord is
portable - it has been tested on Linux and Windows.

Procord provides an easy way to have the same executable act as a worker
- local or remote - or as the main program. The actual behavior can be
specified on the command-line. The default is to run as the main
program, which delegates tasks by running itself.

I will present Procord at the OUPS meeting of this evening.

-- 
Romain Bardou

Re: [Caml-list] [ANN] Procord 0.1.0: Delegate tasks to other processes

[Arnaud Spiwack]

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I see you are using Unix.kill to kill processes. But I was under the
impression that it didn't work properly on Windows. Am I mistaken?


On 9 October 2013 11:09, Romain Bardou <romain.bardou@inria.fr> wrote:

> I am happy to announce the first release of Procord, a portable library
> to delegate tasks to other processes.
>
> Obtain it with opam:
>
>   opam install procord
>
> Or, download the tarball:
>
>   https://github.com/cryptosense/procord/archive/v0.1.0.tar.gz
>
> View a minimal, commented example:
>
>   https://github.com/cryptosense/procord/blob/master/examples/minimal.ml
>
> You can browse the API at:
>
>   http://cryptosense.github.io/procord/api/index.html
>
> Procord can spawn local worker processes or communicate using sockets to
> a remote worker server. Workers will receive an input, execute a
> function on this input, and send back the result. Meanwhile, the main
> program can continue to run while waiting for the results.
>
> Not relying on threads, Procord is robust - a segmentation fault in the
> worker will not kill the main program. Not relying on fork, Procord is
> portable - it has been tested on Linux and Windows.
>
> Procord provides an easy way to have the same executable act as a worker
> - local or remote - or as the main program. The actual behavior can be
> specified on the command-line. The default is to run as the main
> program, which delegates tasks by running itself.
>
> I will present Procord at the OUPS meeting of this evening.
>
> --
> Romain Bardou
>
> --
> Caml-list mailing list.  Subscription management and archives:
> https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-list
> Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners
> Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs
>
>

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Re: [Caml-list] [ANN] Procord 0.1.0: Delegate tasks to other processes

[Romain Bardou]

Indeed. In fact I made a feature request about this:

http://caml.inria.fr/mantis/view.php?id=6146

So, just waiting for OCaml 4.02 will solve the issue.

If waiting is not an option I can of course add this in Procord. I
should at least provide a way to get the PID / Process Handle so that
one can call TerminateProcess using his own binding.

While we are discussing the differences between Windows and Linux, there
is actually another one: the Windows server does not fork and, thus,
only accepts one task at a time. This could be solved by having the
server execute himself to run the tasks. But before actually
implementing this I prefer to wait and see whether there is a real need
(Windows servers are less common).

Cheers,

-- 
Romain Bardou

Le 10/10/2013 14:06, Arnaud Spiwack a écrit :
> I see you are using Unix.kill to kill processes. But I was under the
> impression that it didn't work properly on Windows. Am I mistaken?
> 
> 
> On 9 October 2013 11:09, Romain Bardou <romain.bardou@inria.fr
> <mailto:romain.bardou@inria.fr>> wrote:
> 
>     I am happy to announce the first release of Procord, a portable library
>     to delegate tasks to other processes.
> 
>     Obtain it with opam:
> 
>       opam install procord
> 
>     Or, download the tarball:
> 
>       https://github.com/cryptosense/procord/archive/v0.1.0.tar.gz
> 
>     View a minimal, commented example:
> 
>       https://github.com/cryptosense/procord/blob/master/examples/minimal.ml
> 
>     You can browse the API at:
> 
>       http://cryptosense.github.io/procord/api/index.html
> 
>     Procord can spawn local worker processes or communicate using sockets to
>     a remote worker server. Workers will receive an input, execute a
>     function on this input, and send back the result. Meanwhile, the main
>     program can continue to run while waiting for the results.
> 
>     Not relying on threads, Procord is robust - a segmentation fault in the
>     worker will not kill the main program. Not relying on fork, Procord is
>     portable - it has been tested on Linux and Windows.
> 
>     Procord provides an easy way to have the same executable act as a worker
>     - local or remote - or as the main program. The actual behavior can be
>     specified on the command-line. The default is to run as the main
>     program, which delegates tasks by running itself.
> 
>     I will present Procord at the OUPS meeting of this evening.
> 
>     --
>     Romain Bardou
> 
>     --
>     Caml-list mailing list.  Subscription management and archives:
>     https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-list
>     Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners
>     Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs
> 
> 

Re: [Caml-list] [ANN] Procord 0.1.0: Delegate tasks to other processes

[Louis Gesbert]

You may find the bindings for Terminate_process in ocaml-top useful [1].

I also had to handle sending a SIGINT to the ocaml toplevel, which wasn't very fun,


[1] https://github.com/OCamlPro/ocaml-top/blob/master/src/sigint_win.c

Louis Gesbert -- OCamlPro


On Thursday 10 October 2013 14:24:09 Romain Bardou wrote:
> Indeed. In fact I made a feature request about this:
> 
> http://caml.inria.fr/mantis/view.php?id=6146
> 
> So, just waiting for OCaml 4.02 will solve the issue.
> 
> If waiting is not an option I can of course add this in Procord. I
> should at least provide a way to get the PID / Process Handle so that
> one can call TerminateProcess using his own binding.
> 
> While we are discussing the differences between Windows and Linux, there
> is actually another one: the Windows server does not fork and, thus,
> only accepts one task at a time. This could be solved by having the
> server execute himself to run the tasks. But before actually
> implementing this I prefer to wait and see whether there is a real need
> (Windows servers are less common).
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> > I see you are using Unix.kill to kill processes. But I was under the
> > impression that it didn't work properly on Windows. Am I mistaken?
> > 
> > 
> > On 9 October 2013 11:09, Romain Bardou <romain.bardou@inria.fr
> > <mailto:romain.bardou@inria.fr>> wrote:
> > 
> >     I am happy to announce the first release of Procord, a portable library
> >     to delegate tasks to other processes.
> > 
> >     Obtain it with opam:
> > 
> >       opam install procord
> > 
> >     Or, download the tarball:
> > 
> >       https://github.com/cryptosense/procord/archive/v0.1.0.tar.gz
> > 
> >     View a minimal, commented example:
> > 
> >       https://github.com/cryptosense/procord/blob/master/examples/minimal.ml
> > 
> >     You can browse the API at:
> > 
> >       http://cryptosense.github.io/procord/api/index.html
> > 
> >     Procord can spawn local worker processes or communicate using sockets to
> >     a remote worker server. Workers will receive an input, execute a
> >     function on this input, and send back the result. Meanwhile, the main
> >     program can continue to run while waiting for the results.
> > 
> >     Not relying on threads, Procord is robust - a segmentation fault in the
> >     worker will not kill the main program. Not relying on fork, Procord is
> >     portable - it has been tested on Linux and Windows.
> > 
> >     Procord provides an easy way to have the same executable act as a worker
> >     - local or remote - or as the main program. The actual behavior can be
> >     specified on the command-line. The default is to run as the main
> >     program, which delegates tasks by running itself.
> > 
> >     I will present Procord at the OUPS meeting of this evening.
> > 
> >     --
> >     Romain Bardou
> > 
> >     --
> >     Caml-list mailing list.  Subscription management and archives:
> >     https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-list
> >     Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners
> >     Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs
> > 
> > 
> 
> 
> 

Re: [Caml-list] [ANN] Procord 0.1.0: Delegate tasks to other processes

[Jacques Garrigue]

On 2013/10/10, at 16:59, Louis Gesbert <louis.gesbert@ocamlpro.com> wrote:

> You may find the bindings for Terminate_process in ocaml-top useful [1].
> 
> I also had to handle sending a SIGINT to the ocaml toplevel, which wasn't very fun,
> 
> 
> [1] https://github.com/OCamlPro/ocaml-top/blob/master/src/sigint_win.c
> 
> Louis Gesbert -- OCamlPro

If you're just trying to kill an ocaml toplevel that you have spawned yourself,
you can have a look at labltk/browser/shell.ml.
By setting the environment variable OCAMLSIGPIPE and sending T or C to
this pipe you can kill or interrupt the ocaml toplevel asynchronously.
(At the time I implemented that, there was basically no other way to do that
in windows than having a child thread kill its parent.

	Jacques