Actors for Squeak Smalltalk

The Smalltalk-80 concurrency model is, at heart, threads with mutable shared state plus locks, semaphores, mutexes and so on.

This library adds an Erlang-style Actor model to Squeak.

The following code snippet creates an actor, and invokes one of its methods via synchronous (Promise-based) RPC:

h := HelloWorldActor spawn.
(h greet: 'Actor world') wait. "produces 'Hello, Actor world!'"

Quickstart

1. Download a recent Squeak image and VM.
2. Update to at least trunk update number 17768.
3. (Installer squeaksource project: 'Actors') install: 'ConfigurationOfActors'
4. (optional) Run the tests in package Actors-Tests.

Features

• Erlang-inspired model, including
  • links and Monitors
  • a tracing facility
  • Actor-based socket support
• Smalltalk-inspired extensions and conveniences
  • Actor behaviors are plain old objects
  • Synchronous and asynchronous RPC to actors, using promises
  • rudimentary Morphic GUI support