Branches	Issues	Main developers
master, a_teammate/gluegen_cpp_api	#51, #311	@a_teammate, @aschaeffer

# Language-Agnostic Engine Platform

# Glossary

Abbreviation	Full Term
IPC	Inter-process communication is done when different Processes need to communicate
RPC	Remote Procedure Call is a subtopic of IPC

# Architecture

Instead of integrating a JavaScript engine (like V8/Spidermonkey) directly into Inexor we chose the way of binding node.js (a standalone JS engine) via IPC.
Choosing a multi-process design over a multi-threaded design gives us the following advantages

• we do not need to maintain the JS code
  • (as much)
  • no need to integrate newer v8-versions every now and then into Inexor
• node.js is completely independ
  • if your script crashes your app still lives and vice versa
  • less worrying, less maintainance
• node.js works asynchronously out of the box
  • no need to invent our own custom solutions
• node.js has tons of shipped packages in its package managers

The implementation therefore uses gRPC as underlying library, which is a language neutral framework with bindings in more than 10 languages (and its ecosystem is growing rapidly).
This means our API (Inexor Tree can be used 1:1 for many different purposes:

• Different (Scripting) languages simultaneously
  • People want python? Easy
• Generell Server/Client communication like a gameclient to gameserver
  • Thanks to the new API classes/variables/functions could be synced without manually writing network code

# Future Steps

• More efficient IPC methods
  • Currently we use TCP, unix-sockets/named-pipes would be more efficient (or shared_memory)
    • Lets see what gRPC comes up with next
• Make multi RPC connections really work (currently only one is supported)
• Extend the Inexor Tree