Actor Improvements

[pbayer]

This issue collects different improvements (ideas and proposals) to the actor machinery:

• [x] introduce partial function,
• [x] introduce message macro,
• [x] introduce send_after for doing periodic work (as here in Elixir)
• [ ] hot mode: this allows to execute newly generated, loaded or redefined functions with `invokelatest‘,
• [ ] implement futures (see Futures and Capabilities)

[pbayer]

Introduce partial function ?

Can it be beneficial to introduce a function

partial(f, a...; kw...) = (c...) -> f(a..., c...; kw...)

since that is faster than current Bhv:

julia> f(a,b,c; x=1, y=2) = a+b+c+x+y
f (generic function with 1 method)

julia> partial(f, a...; kw...) = (c...) -> f(a..., c...; kw...)
partial (generic function with 1 method)

julia> f1 = Bhv(f, 1,2);

julia> f2 = partial(f, 1,2)
#25 (generic function with 1 method)

julia> using BenchmarkTools

julia> @btime f1(3)
  25.046 ns (0 allocations: 0 bytes)
9

julia> @btime f2(3)
  13.615 ns (0 allocations: 0 bytes)
9

But partial has two disadvantages to Bhv:

• its arguments can't be accessed and changed after creation and
• it can't be updated to current world age. Therefore it has to be called with invokelatest, which will kill the speed advantage:

julia> @btime Base.invokelatest(f2, 3)
  44.490 ns (1 allocation: 16 bytes)
9

[pbayer]

I am able to get to the same speed as partial if I make Bhv a parametric struct like that:

using BenchmarkTools

f(a,b,c; x=1, y=2) = a+b+c+x+y

partial(f, a...; kw...) = (c...) -> f(a..., c...; kw...)

struct Bhv{F}
    f
    a
    kw
    ϕ::F

    function Bhv(f, a...; kw...)
        ϕ = (c...) -> f(a..., c...; kw...)
        new{typeof(ϕ)}(f, a, kw, ϕ)
    end
end
(bhv::Bhv)(c...) = bhv.ϕ(c...)

julia> f1 = partial(f, 1, 2)
#11 (generic function with 1 method)

julia> f2 = Bhv(f, 1, 2);

julia> @btime f1(3)
  13.089 ns (0 allocations: 0 bytes)
9

julia> @btime f2(3)
  13.443 ns (0 allocations: 0 bytes)
9

Thus I can maintain the advantage of Bhv to be updatable to current world age.

[pbayer]

Register Actors v0.2.1

@JuliaRegistrator register

Release notes:

• partial function application with Bhv much faster

[JuliaRegistrator]

Registration pull request created: JuliaRegistries/General/26647

After the above pull request is merged, it is recommended that a tag is created on this repository for the registered package version.

This will be done automatically if the Julia TagBot GitHub Action is installed, or can be done manually through the github interface, or via:

git tag -a v0.2.1 -m "<description of version>" d8faab1c9e5082ee3c23b48d59e4b4a7b7e37eca
git push origin v0.2.1

[pbayer]

Register Actors v0.2.2

@JuliaRegistrator register

Release notes:

• introduced @msg macro for easy message definition,
• updated examples

[JuliaRegistrator]

Registration pull request created: JuliaRegistries/General/26680

After the above pull request is merged, it is recommended that a tag is created on this repository for the registered package version.

This will be done automatically if the Julia TagBot GitHub Action is installed, or can be done manually through the github interface, or via:

git tag -a v0.2.2 -m "<description of version>" e146b7e7d56cccb9b02c3094b4f501e76ecff7ba
git push origin v0.2.2

[pbayer]

Register Actors v0.2.5

@JuliaRegistrator register

Release notes:

• mainly one bugfix in stop() function, see commit 94cdfbd
• Juliacon21 slides, code, captions

[JuliaRegistrator]

Registration pull request created: JuliaRegistries/General/41679

After the above pull request is merged, it is recommended that a tag is created on this repository for the registered package version.

This will be done automatically if the Julia TagBot GitHub Action is installed, or can be done manually through the github interface, or via:

git tag -a v0.2.5 -m "<description of version>" 9a85dec4316b4b758068fb1686a5b4239737ceca
git push origin v0.2.5