ANN: ocamlnet-3.0test2

ANN: ocamlnet-3.0test2

[Gerd Stolpmann]

Hi list,

it is my pleasure to announce the second test version of the upcoming
ocamlnet3 library. This version mainly includes a large number of bug
fixes compared to the first version, but also a few additions:

      * netcamlbox: a fast ipc mechanism for sending ocaml values to
        another process. Netcamlbox is shared-memory based, and works
        well on multi-cores (see
        http://projects.camlcity.org/projects/dl/ocamlnet-3.0test2/doc/html-main/Netcamlbox.html for doc)
      * netplex adds per-process sockets, so one can send messages to
        individual containers, and not only to the whole service
      * wrappers for POSIX semaphores
      * wrappers for syslog
      * performance optimizations (serialization, page-aligned I/O)
      * updated documentation

Already in the first test version:

      * Port to Win32 (as outlined in the blog article
        http://blog.camlcity.org/blog/ocamlnet3_win32.html)
      * The new Rpc_proxy layer (as described in
        http://blog.camlcity.org/blog/ocamlnet3_ha.html)
      * Extensions of Netplex (see especially
        http://blog.camlcity.org/blog/ocamlnet3_mp.html)
      * New implementation of the Shell library for starting
        subprocesses 
      * Uniform debugging with Netlog.Debug 
      * Exception printers (Netexn) 
      * Introduction of pollsets (Netsys_pollset); removal of
        Unix.select (i.e. more than 1024 file descriptors) 
      * The netcgi1 library has been dropped in favor of netcgi2

I've quickly checked that the library builds on linux, freebsd-7.2, open
solaris, and Win32 (MinGW). Nevertheless, testers are especially
encouraged to check whether Ocamlnet 3 still works on all platforms,
because a lot of new platform-specific code has been added.

Download etc:

      * Homepage: http://projects.camlcity.org/projects/ocamlnet.html
      * Download:
        http://download.camlcity.org/download/ocamlnet-3.0test2.tar.gz
      * Manual:
        http://projects.camlcity.org/projects/dl/ocamlnet-3.0test2/doc/html-main/index.html
      * My "scratch pad" describing changes, plans, etc:
        https://godirepo.camlcity.org/svn/lib-ocamlnet2/trunk/code/TODO
      * Subversion:
        https://godirepo.camlcity.org/svn/lib-ocamlnet2/trunk/

There is a GODI package, but you have to enable a special repository to
get it: Add 

GODI_BUILD_SITES+=http://www.ocaml-programming.de/godi-build/ocamlnet3/

to godi.conf to see the new packages in godi_console. This works first
after the bootstrap is finished (godi_console cannot be built with
ocamlnet3 yet). Keep in mind that this is development code, and there is
no easy way to downgrade to ocamlnet2. Best is you do this only for new
GODI installations.

Special thanks to everybody who helped me to produce this new version -
by reporting bugs, or even sending fixes, or by maintaining subtrees
(Christophe Troestler).

Gerd
-- 
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Gerd Stolpmann, Bad Nauheimer Str.3, 64289 Darmstadt,Germany 
gerd@gerd-stolpmann.de          http://www.gerd-stolpmann.de
Phone: +49-6151-153855                  Fax: +49-6151-997714
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