ILU (IDL ...)

From The Modula-3 FAQ:
[ Sorry for the attrocious indenting and wraparound. ]

> 7.2. ILU, an object-oriented multi-lingual RPC-capable
module system
>
>
> The following was recently announced by Xerox PARC:
>
> Version 1.6.4 of the Xerox PARC Inter-Language
Unification (ILU)
> system is now available for general use.
> WHAT'S ILU?
>
> ILU (pronounced eye'-loo) is a system that promotes software
> interoperability via interfaces. Interfaces between what?
Whatever
> units of program structure are desired; we call them by
the generic
> term "modules". They could be parts of one process, all
written in
> the same language; they could be parts written in different languages,
> sharing runtime support in one memory image; they
could be parts
> running in different memory images on different machines (on different
> sides of the planet). A module could even be a
distributed system
> implemented by many programs on many machines. Calls
across ILU
> interfaces involve only as much mechanism as necessary for the calling
> and called modules to interact. In particular, when the two
modules
> are in the same memory image and use the same data
representations,
> the calls are direct local procedure calls -- no stubs or other RPC
> mechanisms are involved.
>
> ILU modules are known by their interfaces. A module
interface is
> specified once in ILU's object-oriented Interface Specification
> Language (called, simply, ISL). For each of the particular
> programming languages supported by ILU (currently Common Lisp, ANSI C,
> C++, and Modula-3; Python, Tcl, and GNU Emacs-Lisp are in
the works),
> a version of the interface in that particular programming language can
> be generated. The ILU kernel library provides services which may be
> used by the language-specific interface to overcome
intermodule
> language or address space differences.
>
> Many existing RPC systems, such as Xerox XNS Courier, ONC RPC, and OSF
> DCE RPC, have strong notions of interfaces. ILU allows binding to
> such services provided by such systems if their
interfaces can be
> described in ISL. ISL has been designed to
facilitate such
> description (currently, only for ONC RPC; Courier and DCE RPC are in
> progress). The binding to such RPC services is done in such a way as
> to be indistinguishable from binding to other ILU modules.
In fact,
> properly constructed ILU modules can appear as native RPC services,
> and can be manipulated by non-ILU tools designed to work
with those
> RPC services.
>
> Similarly, the Object Management Group's (OMG) Common
Object Request
> Broker Architecture (CORBA) defines modules with explicit interfaces.
> ILU allows modules that can be described with a safe
subset of OMG
> CORBA IDL to be used as ILU modules, as well, though the
ILU object
> model is not quite the same as the OMG CORBA object model. In fact,
> people wishing to experiment with CORBA may find
ILU a useful
> experimental platform, as it does allow module specification with OMG
> IDL, and does generate ANSI C support as specified in Draft 1.2 of the
> OMG CORBA specification. As the OMG specification for a C++
mapping
> is agreed upon, we intend to provide that mapping for our C++ support,
> as well.
>
> Release 1.6.4 is intended as a beta release. Major
efficiency
> improvements and some usability improvements are planned
for the next
> release. It has been tested lightly on SunOS 4.1.3, Sun's
Solaris
> 2.3, and SGI's IRIX 5.2. It is designed to be highly
portable, and a
> port to the Macintosh has been done (but is not included
in this
> release).
>
>
> GETTING THE RELEASE
>
> The release is only available via FTP from the PARC
ftp server.
> Perhaps the simplest way is to go through our World Wide
Web home
> page,
>
>
>
> <A HREF=ftp://parcftp.parc.xerox.com/pub/ilu/ilu.html>ILU </A>
>
>
>
> It has links to everything else, and may help answer any questions you
> might have.
>
> The release notes are available as an HTML document.
>
>
> <A HREF=ftp://parcftp.parc.xerox.com/pub/ilu/1.6.4/announce.html>
Announce </A>
>
>
>
> The full source code, including documentation, is available as a 3 MB
> compressed tar file as
>
>
> <A
HREF=ftp://parcftp.parc.xerox.com/pub/ilu/1.6.4/ilu-1.6.4.tar.Z>
Source </A>
>
>
>
> The 1.6.4 ILU manual is also available separately, either in
> Postscript (231 KB) as
>
>
> <A
HREF=ftp://parcftp.parc.xerox.com/pub/ilu/1.6.4/ilu-manual-1.6.4.ps.Z>
Documentation </A>
>
>
>
> or via World Wide Web at
>
>
> <A
HREF=ftp://parcftp.parc.xerox.com/pub/ilu/1.6.4/manual-html/manual_toc.
html> Documentation </A>
>
>
>
>
> CONTRIBUTORS
>
> Antony Courtney, Doug Cutting, Bill Janssen, Denis
Severson, Mike
> Spreitzer, Mark Stefik, Farrell Wymore
>
>
>
Received on Thu Aug 18 23:53:12 1994