On Fri, Oct 28, 2005 at 02:01:28PM +0100, Bob.Cowdery at CGI-Europe.com wrote:
> Ok, I have an application (this is hobby time not work time) in Python that
> is a software defined radio, running in two parts over a network. The server
> and the client part communicate using Pyro (a distributed object protocol
> for Python). The server is mostly 'C' with Python wrappers. For this
> experiment I intend leaving the server much as it is except I have to
> connect to it from Squeak. I guess I would have to use plain sockets and
> devise a text based message protocol to get these two parts to communicate.
> 
> First question - is there any better way (meaning higher level) way to do
> this communication, perhaps using Squeak on both sides. I could arrange for
> the server side Squeak to talk to the 'C' processes through named pipes if
> this makes things easier. The server is on Linux (Suse 9.3) by the way. The
> client in on Windows XP.

If you want a Squeak server to talk to your 'C process' through OS
pipes, you can do this with class PipeableOSProcess. You need to load
the packages OSProcess and CommandShell from SqueakMap (PipeableOSProcess
is in the CommandShell package). If your 'C process' interacts with
the world through stdin and stdout streams, this would be a reasonable
thing to do. This only works on Unix/Linux, but it would be fine for
your Linux server.

Also, if you want to have two Squeak images running as client and
server, it is convenient to have one of them start the other one
with "OSProcess thisOSProcess forkSqueakAndDo: [something]" or
"OSProcess thisOSProcess forkHeadlessSqueakAndDo: [something]"
(to start a headless Squeak server with no UI). You can't do this
from your Windows XP system, but if you are developing on your
Linux box it may come in handy.

Dave