[Oops, had sent this reply only to Willem. That's the message he refers to previously]

On 27/07/05, Willem Broekema metawilm@gmail.com wrote:

To check whether a _node_ is still running and connected, monitor_node can be used; from http://www.erlang.org/download/erlang-book-part1.pdf page 98:

"If no connection exists, and monitor_node/2 is called, the system will try to setup a connection and deliver a nodedown message if the connection fails."

To check whether a _process_ is still alive, linking to it and checking for the corresponding EXIT message is the way to go.

OK. So the question is: what happens if you're linked to a process on another node, and that node fails? You get an EXIT message, don't you? Or do you just sit idly until timeout, and need to have another process explicitly monitor the remote node and kill you? I guess that in Lisp, these details are handled with a proper meta-level protocol. Is there such a protocol in Erlang?

By the way, my experience with Erlang is mostly in trying to develop a Gnutella client a few years ago. To the reasonable nice original Gnutella protocol, many ill-specified ad-hoc extensions were added by the existing clients. Implementing these extensions, which is necessary in order to play well with the other clients, became less and less interesting, so I never finished it.

These sounds like the general story of any and all computing projects: interfacing with the horde out there is boring. Which can be seen as an opportunity and a challenge: can we build socio-technical infrastructures which allow to develop code that isn't boring?

At least, the company I'm at has found a way to alleviate the bore: make money.

Although I still find Erlang interesting, these days I'm more interested in Common Lisp.

Wait till you have Erlisp, then. Or better: contribute -- your knowledge, for instance: you seem like the person who knows where to quickly find answers to the questions about Erlang :-)

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