Lua nodes is a "different" way to execute Lua code. It combines three
existing technologies: Lua, POSIX threads, and, 0MQ (zeromq.orq).
Lua nodes comes as a binary, called "node", which takes a filename of
a Lua program as argument. This Lua program is meant to "orchestrate"
a network of Nodes.
This program can thus create "nodes" using the "node" module. Nodes
are independent Lua states running in their own thread. Nodes can
communicate using 0MQ (zeromq) message queues. The Lua states run
truly in parallel and use all available CPU cores. This has nothing to
do with Lua coroutines (which are still available to each Lua state).
Nodes can communicate between threads in the same process, processes
on the same machine, or, processes on different machines by using
zeromq message queues. Lua nodes allow for full distributed/parallel
processing, using a simple language, Lua.
A new Node (i.e. a Lua state running in its own thread) is created
using node.create():
local n = node.create('worker.lua', 'bee', 42)
This will create a new thread with a new Lua state, running the chunk
found in the file "worker.lua", passing the arguments "bee" and 42 in
"..." to worker.lua.
Nodes can use the "zmq" module to communicate with each other. So it
is possible to run multiple independend Lua threads in one process and
have them communicate with each other, or with Nodes in differents
processes on the same machine, or with Nodes running on a remote
machines.
Comments, suggestions, and, ideas welcome.
