Hi,
== Context ==
I need a messaging system to have rails pushing tasks to processes in a distributed environment. I need this to be small and hacker friendly, so Stompserver and activemessaging looked good to me. There are some needs that I can't address as is with Stompserver and ActiveMessaging so I'm currently hacking them for the following:
- make Stompserver use a database for storing queues instead of relying on Madeleine. Madeleine is interesting but I'm not sure I understand the limitations of the journaling (I've only looked briefly at Madeleine's code) + I need a way to inspect the queue backlogs to monitor the whole environment so a journal isn't really what I'm after, a traditionnal database is far better for this. - as I want messages to stay in queue instead of being dispatched to subscribers if they are already busy, I'm delaying messages for subscribers with "ack: client" until they send an ack back (this helps with load distribution and can avoid stompserver being blocked for a while when a new subscriber comes). - this means that I have to modify ActiveMessaging to support acknowledgment (or support it more naturally).
== Current state ==
Unreadable I'm a little hard on myself, but even if for example the DB support in Stompserver works, I've lots of cleanups to do...
I began with the Madeleine -> ActiveRecord port which put pieces of StompServer's code all around on the floor It runs now (though I'm seeing warnings when I serialize the frames to a TEXT column : Exception `TypeError' at /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-1.14.4/lib/active_record/base.rb:2068 - can't clone Fixnum).
I've implemented my modified ack/queuing behaviour in Stompserver and am currently switching my attention to ActiveMessaging.
== Questions ==
Is anyone else interested in these modifications? The more fair load distribution is completely independent of the DB support so I could push a patch for Stompserver rather easily. Don't know yet for ActiveMessaging. The DB support is more invasive that I though it would be, I began thinking I could somehow allow users to choose a storage backend between Madeleine and ActiveRecord at runtime but I let this behind for the moment. If there's interest in having a one-size fits all, I can look into it.
Has someone a tip for the TypeError I get (described above)? It seems harmless, but I don't like having harmless warnings next to real error messages
== Thanks ==
Thanks for both StompServer and ActiveMessaging. It will probably save me quite some development time (this is why I'm willing to contribute back).
Best regards,
Lionel