Py-Interface

Description

The Py-Interface is a python-implementation of an Erlang node.

The py_interface provides the possibility to create a node that may be used for communication with other Erlang nodes.

Some characteristics:

• The Python nodes are hidden, like the Java nodes
• The Python node supports
  • registering the Python node in the epmd
  • sending and receiving message
  • executing remote procedure calls (the rpc:call(M,F,A) mechanism)
• The Python node does currently not do:
  • linking
  • tracing
• The Python node translates Erlang types to Python types as far as there is a reasonable Python counterpart. If there is not, then a class is used.
• The Python node is a single threaded callback-driven process.
• The Python node runs on Python 2.5+ and Erlang R13. It may well still work with older version of both Python and Erlang. Development started on Python 1.5 and Erlang R7.
• The source of information for this Python node has been the files `distribution_handshake.txt' and `erl_ext_dist.txt' together with the Java node source files, the `net_kernel.erl' and the `dist_util.erl' files in the Erlang source code distribution.

Screenshot (well, sort of)

Here's a screenshot of one of the test programs (since the main code is a library, it doesn't look like anything at all on a picture :-)

Download

Download the latest version: py_interface-0.98.tar.gz (70 kB).

Py-Interface is written entirely in Python, for communication with Erlang so you need to download and install Python and you need to download and install a copy of Erlang on your machine first.

Development

A git repository is hosted at repo.or.cz. To clone it, run:

   git clone git://repo.or.cz/py_interface.git

Known bugs

Probably a few.

One known issue, though: Sending a fun from Erlang to Python and back to Erlang won't result in the original fun on the Erlang side.

Authors

Tomas Abrahamsson <tab@lysator.liu.se>, with great help from David King, Ed Blake, Luke Gorrie, Jimmy Olgeni and Nigel Head. (I hope I haven't forgotten anyone; please let me know if that's the case.)

Legal issues

Py-Interface is distributed under the GNU Library General Public License.

History

version 0.98, 2009-Nov-18 py_interface-0.98.tar.gz

Changes: Bugfix for handling negative integers, reported by bird devdoer.

version 0.97, 2009-Jul-27 py_interface-0.97.tar.gz

Changes:

• py_interface/erl_eventhandler.py: handles interrupted system call exceptions also in the timeout case.
• py_interface/erl_node.py: doc string fix for methods ErlMBox.Send and ErlNode.SendMsgFromMBox: the order of the process name and node name had gotten mixed up. Noted by Paul TBBle Hampson.
• py_interface/erl_node_conn.py: Python 2.6 compatibility patch by David Reiss applied: uses md5 from hashlib if that one is available.

version 0.96, 2008-Dec-17 py_interface-0.96.tar.gz

Changes: Applied two patches from Anton Krasovsky: fixes for programming errors triggered by internode communication failures.
Also fixed is version number propagation to all files, and building problems: the tar file now contains all files necessary to build the package.

version 0.95, 2008-Jul-15 py_interface-0.95.tar.gz

Changes: Applied patch from David King: the socket connection now also checks for EWOULDBLOCK. Previously it only checked for EAGAIN.

• The code now resides in its own namespace: py_interface
• Now supports packaging as an easy_install egg
• Bugfix: Queued writes attempted to access an undefined variable.

version 0.94, 2008-Jul-13 py_interface-0.94.tar.gz

Changes: Applied patches and bugfixes from David King:

• The code now resides in its own namespace: py_interface
• Now supports packaging as an easy_install egg
• Bugfix: Queued writes attempted to access an undefined variable.

version 0.93, 2006-Jul-25 py_interface-0.93.tar.gz

Changes:

• Updated to work with Erlang R10 and R11 (15-->28 bits in pids and ports).
• Now also works with threaded Tcl (as with Debian) as well.
• Also fixed a deprecation issue: integer vs floating-point timeout values in erl_event_handler.py.
• Also added an installation support (the __init__.py file), based on information by Ed Blake.

version 0.92, 2004-Jul-13 py_interface-0.92.tar.gz

Several bugfixes in packing/unpacking of erlang terms. A lot of thanks to Jimmy Olgeni and Nigel Head for patches. See the file erl_term.py, in the tar file, for details.

version 0.91, 2002-Jul-21 py_interface-0.91.tar.gz

Added autoconf stuff. This version is/was also on the Erlang User contribution page

version 0.9, 2002-May-29 py_interface-0.9.tar.gz

First version

$Id: index.html,v 1.17 2009/11/18 20:37:32 tab Exp $