[cap-talk] "Comm system"

[Kevin Reid]

On Mar 15, 2007, at 21:19, James A. Donald wrote:
> In a capabilities system, the important boundary is between processes
> operating message pumps, communicating by streams.

In E, references crossing such a boundary are called "far"; those  
which do not are called "near". Only far references are managed by a  
comm system; so this boundary is already exposed and named, and is  
the relevant one. What do we call the component which manages the  
crossing of this boundary?

(This is not quite accurate due to promises and broken references;  
see http://www.erights.org/elib/concurrency/refmech.html for the full  
taxonomy of references. I also notice that that page refers to  
"local" and "remote" promises.)

> Seems to me that if you need to talk about remoting, you are doing
> something wrong.  The difference between remote and local should be an
> implementation detail

I agree in the case of same-machine/OS/process vs. network; but we  
already have a user-visible distinction between vats. Do you think it  
is wrong to use "remote" to refer to that?

-- 
Kevin Reid                            <http://homepage.mac.com/kpreid/>