[erlisp-devel] Re: SoC status update please

[Dirk Gerrits]

Joel Reymont wrote:
> I think within Erlang nodes use a keep alive message to make sure  they 
> have not been split off. Quite often, though, you cannot detect  if the 
> foreign process exists. If it's a local process id and you  send it a 
> message and it's dead then you will get a no_proc  exception, not so 
> with a foreign process.
> 
> It does seem to me that the easiest way to verify if a node is alive  is 
> to send a keep-alive message to a housekeeping process on that  node and 
> consider it split off if a reply is not received after a  timeout.

Sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

> I'm not sure if it matters if a node is dead or just split off.

Erlang doesn't make the distinction, does it?

My thinking is that if it's good enough for Erlang, it is /at least/ 
good enough for Erlisp stage 1.  We can always reconsider later on (even 
though it might be more painful then ;)).

- Dirk