lambdaclass / lambdaclass/spawned

Add link and monitor operations for actors

Open
#131 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

enhancement
Dominant language
Rust
Stars
59
Forks
5
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

Description

Erlang-style process relationships, adapted to Spawned's type system (no Pids — uses ActorRef<A> and Recipient<M>).

Linking (bidirectional):

  • When a linked actor stops, the other is notified (and stopped, unless trapping exits)
  • start_linked() — start an actor linked to the caller

Monitoring (one-way):

  • Observer receives a notification when the monitored actor stops
  • monitor()MonitorRef
  • demonitor(monitor_ref)

Exit trapping:

  • trap_exit() — convert linked exit signals into messages instead of stopping

Design notes:

  • No Pid type — link/monitor targets are identified via ActorRef or Recipient
  • Exit notifications delivered as messages to the actor's handler (exact message type TBD during implementation)
  • Foundation for supervision (#133, #134)

Part of Phase 3 (Supervision Trees) — see docs/ROADMAP.md.

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start with docs/ROADMAP.md and inspect the existing ActorRef and Recipient APIs mentioned in the issue. Clarify the exit-notification message type and the link, monitor, and trapping semantics before implementation. Done means the requested operations work consistently and provide the foundation described for supervision trees.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
rust
Domain
distributed-systems
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.