epollcat

An I/O-integrated runtime for Cats Effect on Scala Native, implemented with the epoll API on Linux and the kqueue API on macOS.

The primary goal of this project is to provide implementations for Java network I/O APIs used in the fs2-io library so that its fs2.io.net package can cross-build for Scala Native. This in turn enables projects such as http4s Ember and Skunk to cross-build for Native as well.

libraryDependencies += "com.armanbilge" %%% "epollcat" % "0.1.4"

FAQ

When do I need this?

If you are developing a Scala Native application for Linux and macOS that does network I/O with fs2-io or any library built on top of it, such as http4s Ember or Skunk. If you are not doing network I/O, then the default Cats Effect runtime will work fine.

How can I use this?

There are a couple options:

1. Where you would normally use IOApp or IOApp.Simple, simply use EpollApp or EpollApp.Simple instead: it's a drop-in replacement.

2. For test frameworks and other unusual situations, you may need to use EpollRuntime.global. For example to use with munit-cats-effect:

override def munitIORuntime = EpollRuntime.global

Should I add this as a dependency to my Scala Native library?

I do not recommend it. This project is intended for only applications, it is too opinionated for libraries to force it onto their users:

1. It supports only Linux and macOS.
2. It partially implements java.* APIs which it does not hold the "namespace rights" to, but these implementations are not canonical nor do they intend to be.
3. Your user may want to use a different runtime in their application (for example the CurlRuntime from http4s-curl). It is not possible to mix runtimes; expect bad things to happen.

However, you may want to add this dependency in your project's Test scope so that you can run your test suite on Native. You may also recommend Native users of your library add this dependency to their applications.

Do I have have to use Cats Effect and FS2?

Actually, no :) inside EpollRuntime.global you will find a vanilla ExecutionContext and Scheduler with APIs in terms of Java Runnable. You can use these to run your Scala Futures or other effect types and interact directly with the Java APIs.

macOS support?

Despite the project name, epollcat supports macOS as well via the kqueue API.

Windows support?

Sorry, nope :)

Why not use libuv?

First of all, I think a libuv-based runtime is a great idea, particularly due to the cross-platform compatibility and also because it provides async DNS and file system APIs (via its own blocking pool). If anyone wants to work on this I would be very happy to help you get started!

I thought a lot about this and where I should best put my time and energy. Here is some of my reasoning.

1. Actually, libuv is a bit too high-level for our needs: it essentially offers an entire runtime, including a scheduler and a blocking pool. Ideally we would use only its cross-platform I/O polling capability within our own Cats Effect runtime, but this does not seem to be exposed unfortunately.

   This becomes especially relevant when Scala Native supports multi-threading. Cats Effect JVM ships with a fantastic runtime that I am hopeful we can eventually cross-build for Native. Meanwhile, the libuv event loop is fundamentally single-threaded.

   Since in the long run implementing our own async I/O library seems inevitable, this project makes an early investment in that direction.

2. Dependencies on native libraries create build complexity, and build complexity is a burden on maintainers as well as contributors.

3. epollcat is a pretty cool name and I couldn't think of anything comparable for libuv :) besides unicorn velociraptors probably eat cats for lunch!