Calling Go from Elixir with a CNode in Crystal

https://relistan.com/calling-go-from-elixir-with-a-cnode

by mmcclure • 1 year ago

22 11 1 year ago

pjmlp4• 1 year ago

Two backend microservices that could talk over regular OS IPC, or eventually something like gRPC, while making DevOps life easy, instead it became "how many languages can we place into a single executable" kind of exercise.

nesarkvechnep• 1 year ago

My experience is, people don't know jack about OS IPC.

pjmlp4• 1 year ago

Unfortunately.

dzonga• 1 year ago

for the app I don't even think they need all that chicanery. but i'm not an architecture astronaut.

fridder• 1 year ago

one restriction on the OS side that comes from Erlang and thus by extension Elixir(from the erlang FAQ: "9.12 Why can't I open devices (e.g. a serial port) like normal files? Short answer: because the erlang runtime system was not designed to do that. The Erlang runtime system's internal file access system, efile, must avoid blocking, otherwise the whole Erlang system will block. This is not a good thing in a soft real-time system. When accessing regular files, it's generally a reasonable assumption that operations will not block. Devices, on the other hand, are quite likely to block. Some devices, such as serial ports, may block indefinitely. There are several possible ways to solve this. The Erlang runtime system could be altered, or an external port program could be used to access the device. Two mailing list discussions about the topic can be found here and here."

pjmlp4• 1 year ago

UNIX IPC is not files based, this is exactly one scenario where "everything is a file" fails, so I don't quite follow.

manchmalscott• 1 year ago

In the article it’s pretty clear that they do put the go code in a separate executable and it connects over the BEAMs existing node RPC.

pjmlp4• 1 year ago

Indeed, they did.

Now can you explain why a needless C wrapper around Go code, or the BEAM usage around it, in such a kludge contraption, are an improvement over plain OS IPC capabilities, or OS agnostic IPC like gRPC?

relistan3• 1 year ago

Try googling for the solution you would have used here and report back ;)

Calling Go from Elixir with a CNode in Crystal

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