+
###
-### Ongoing stuff
+### Urgent stuff:
###
+* Have a proper todo file
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ ************************************************
+ *** This file is a TODO. It is thus kinda ***
+ *** outdated. You know the story, right? ***
+ ************************************************
+
+
+
###
-### Planned
+### Ongoing stuff
###
-*
-* Infrastructure
-****************
+Document host module
-[autoconf]
- * Check the gcc version on powerpc. We disabled -floop-optimize on powerpc,
- but versions above 3.4.0 should be ok.
- * check whether we have better than jmp_buf to implement exceptions, and
- use it (may need to generate a public .h, as glib does)
+/* FIXME: better place? */
+int vasprintf (char **ptr, const char *fmt, va_list ap);
+char *bprintf(const char*fmt, ...) _XBT_GNUC_PRINTF(1,2);
+
+###
+### Planned
+###
*
* XBT
*****
-[doc]
- * graphic showing:
- (errors, logs ; dynars, dicts, hooks, pools; config, rrdb)
-
-[portability layer]
- * Mallocators and/or memory pool so that we can cleanly kill an actor
-
[errors/exception]
- * Better split casual errors from programing errors.
- The first ones should be repported to the user, the second should kill
+ * Better split casual errors from programming errors.
+ The first ones should be reported to the user, the second should kill
the program (or, yet better, only the msg handler)
* Allows the use of an error handler depending on the current module (ie,
- the same philosophy than log4c using GSL's error functions)
+ the same philosophy as log4c using GSL's error functions)
[logs]
* Hijack message from a given category to another for a while (to mask
initializations, and more)
* Allow each actor to have its own setting
- * a init/exit mecanism for logging appender
- * Several appenders; fix the setting stuff to change the appender
* more logging appenders (take those from Ralf in l2)
-[dict]
- * speed up the cursors, for example using the contexts when available
-
[modules]
- * better formalisation of what modules are (amok deeply needs it)
- configuration + init() + exit() + dependencies
- * allow to load them at runtime
- check in erlang how they upgrade them without downtime
+ * Add configuration and dependencies to our module definition
[other modules]
* we may need a round-robin database module, and a statistical one
- * a hook module *may* help cleaning up some parts. Not sure yet.
* Some of the datacontainer modules seem to overlap. Kill some of them?
-
-*
-* GRAS
-******
-
-[doc]
- * add the token ring as official example
- * implement the P2P protocols that macedon does. They constitute great
- examples, too
-
-[transport]
- * Spawn threads handling the communication
- - Data sending cannot be delegated if we want to be kept informed
- (*easily*) of errors here.
- - Actor execution flow shouldn't be interrupted
- - It should be allowed to access (both in read and write access)
- any data available (ie, referenced) from the actor without
- requesting to check for a condition before.
- (in other word, no mutex or assimilated)
- - I know that enforcing those rules prevent the implementation of
- really cleaver stuff. Keeping the stuff simple for the users is more
- important to me than allowing them to do cleaver tricks. Black magic
- should be done *within* gras to reach a good performance level.
-
- - Data receiving can be delegated (and should)
- The first step here is a "simple" mailbox mecanism, with a fifo of
- messages protected by semaphore.
- The rest is rather straightforward too.
-
- * use poll(2) instead of select(2) when available. (first need to check
- the advantage of doing so ;)
-
- Another idea we spoke about was to simulate this feature with a bunch of
- threads blocked in a read(1) on each incomming socket. The latency is
- reduced by the cost of a syscall, but the more I think about it, the
- less I find the idea adapted to our context.
-
- * timeout the send/recv too (hard to do in RL)
- * Adaptative timeout
- * multiplex on incoming SOAP over HTTP (once datadesc can deal with it)
-
- * The module syntax/API is too complex.
- - Everybody opens a server socket (or almost), and nobody open two of
- them. This should be done automatically without user intervention.
- - I'd like to offer the possibility to speak to someone, not to speak on
- a socket. Users shouldn't care about such technical details.
- - the idea of host_cookie in NWS seem to match my needs, but we still
- need a proper name ;)
- - this would allow to exchange a "socket" between peer :)
- - the creation needs to identify the peer actor within the process
-
- * when a send failed because the socket was closed on the other side,
- try to reopen it seamlessly. Needs exceptions or another way to
- differentiate between the several system_error.
- * cache accepted sockets and close the old ones after a while.
- Depends on the previous item; difficult to achieve with firewalls
-
-[datadesc]
- * Implement gras_datadesc_cpy to speedup things in the simulator
- (and allow to have several "actors" within the same unix process).
- For now, we mimick closely the RL even in SG. It was easier to do
- since the datadesc layer is unchanged, but it is not needed and
- hinders performance.
- gras_datadesc_cpy needs to provide the size of the corresponding messages, so
- that we can report it into the simulator.
- * Add a XML wire protocol alongside to the binary one (for SOAP/HTTP)
- * cbps:
- - Error handling
- - Regression tests
- * Inter-arch conversions
- - Port to ARM
- - Convert in the same buffer when size increase
- - Exchange (on net) structures in one shoot when possible.
- - Port to really exotic platforms (Cray is not IEEE ;)
- * datadesc_set_cste: give the value by default when receiving.
- - It's not transfered anymore, which is good for functions pointer.
- * Parsing macro
- - Cleanup the code (bison?)
- - Factorize code in union/struct field adding
- - Handle typedefs (needs love from DataDesc/)
- - Handle unions with annotate
- - Handle enum
- - Handle long long and long double
- - Forbid "char", allow "signed char" and "unsigned char", or user code won't be
- portable to ARM, at least.
- - Handle struct/union/enum embeeded within another container
- (needs modifications in DataDesc, too)
- - Allow sizes for multi-dimensional objects (such as matrices)
-
- - Check short a, b;
- - Check short ***
- - Check struct { struct { int a } b; }
-
- * gras_datadesc_import_nws?
-
-[Messaging]
- * A proper RPC mecanism
- - gras_rpctype_declare_v (name,ver, payload_request, payload_answer)
- (or gras_msgtype_declare_rpc_v).
- - Attaching a cb works the same way.
- - gras_msg_rpc(peer, &request, &answer)
- - On the wire, a byte indicate the message type:
- - 0: one-way message (what we have for now)
- - 1: method call (answer expected; sessionID attached)
- - 2: successful return (usual datatype attached, with sessionID)
- - 3: error return (payload = exception)
- - other message types are possible (forwarding request, group
- communication)
- * Message priority
- * Message forwarding
- * Group communication
- * Message declarations in a tree manner (such as log channels)?
-
-[GRASPE] (platform expender)
- * Tool to visualize/deploy and manage in RL
- * pull method of source diffusion in graspe-slave
-
-[Actors] (parallelism in GRAS)
- * An actor is a user process.
- It has a highly sequential control flow from its birth until its death.
- The timers won't stop the current execution to branch elsewhere, they
- will be delayed until the actor is ready to listen. Likewise, no signal
- delivery. The goal is to KISS for users.
- * You can fork a new actor, even on remote hosts.
- * They are implemented as threads in RL, but this is still a distributed
- memory *model*. If you want to share data with another actor, send it
- using the message interface to explicit who's responsible of this data.
- * data exchange between actors placed within the same UNIX process is
- *implemented* by memcopy, but that's an implementation detail.
-
-[Other, more general issues]
- * watchdog in RL (ie, while (1) { fork; exec the child, wait in father })
- * Allow [homogeneous] dico to be sent
- * Make GRAS thread safe by mutexing what needs to be
-
-*
-* AMOK
-******
-
-[bandwidth]
- * finish this module (still missing the saturate part)
- * add a version guessing the appropriate datasizes automatically
-[other modules]
- * provide a way to retrieve the host load as in NWS
- * log control, management, dynamic token ring
- * a way using SSH to ask a remote host to open a socket back on me
-
+ - replace fifo with dynars
+ - replace set with SWAG
