Integrating and Extending JCSP

摘要

This paper presents the extended and re-integrated JCSP library of CSP packages for Java. It integrates the differing advances made by Quickstone's JCSP Network Edition and the "core" library maintained at Kent. A more secure API for connecting networks and manipulating channels is provided, requiring significant internal re-structuring. This mirrors developments in the occam-pi language for mandated direction specifiers on channel-ends. For JCSP, promoting the concept of channel-ends to first-class entities has both semantic benefit (the same as for occam-pi) and increased safety. Major extensions include alting barriers (classes supporting external choice over multiple multi-way synchronisations), channel output guards (straightforward once we have the alting barriers), channel poisoning (for the safe and simple termination of networks or sub-networks) and extended rendezvous on channel communications (that simplify the capture of several useful synchronisation design patterns). Almost all CSP systems can now be directly captured with the new JCSP. The new library is available under the LGPL open source license.