MELON

MELON is a new communication paradigm for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs).

This library is a prototype implementation of MELON in Ruby.

Concepts

Conceptionally, MELON communicates via a semi-persistent shared storage space. Messages are retrieved by matching them against a template (similar to tuple-spaces). Templates may really be any features, but in this implementation messages are arrays and they are matched using arrays with either literal values (e.g., 1) or classes (e.g, Integer).

MELON has two basic types of messages: read-only and take-only.

Read-only messages may only be retrieved by copying, never removed from the storage space. These can be considered "broadcast" messages.

Take-only messages may only be retrieved from the storage space by removal, and only once.

All messages may only be retrieved once by a given process. Messages are retrieved in per-sender FIFO order. In other words, messages from a given sender will be retrieved in the order that sender stored them.

MELON also provides bulk read and take operations.

Operations

• Melon#store - store a take-only message
• Melon#write - store a read-only message
• Melon#take - retrieve a matching take-only message
• Melon#read - retrieve a matching read-only message
• Melon#take_all - retrieve all available matching take-only messages
• Melon#read_all - retrieve all available matching read-only messages

Retrieval operations are blocking by default. They will block the process until a matching message is found. To return nil after a best-effort search of available processes, pass false as the second argument.

Note all retrieval methods are best effort. There is no guarantee that a matching message will be retrieved, even if it exists.

Guarantees:

• Each message will only be retrieved at most once per process
• Matching messages will be retrieved in per-process FIFO order
• Take-only messages can only be retrieved at most once

Requirements

• Ruby

Installation

git clone git@github.com:presidentbeef/melon.git
cd melon
gem build melon.gemspec
gem install manet_melon*.gem

Example Applications

See README.md in the examples directory for information about running the code examples.

Documentation

See here for more details about MELON.