Different Scala Actor Implementations Overview

Posted by Stefan K. on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Stefan K.
Published on 2010-05-25T15:38:09Z Indexed on 2010/05/25 16:01 UTC
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Filed under:

scala

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actors

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lift

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scalaz

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akka

I'm trying to find the 'right' actor implementation for my thesis. I realized there is a bunch of them and it's a bit confusing to pick one. Personally I'm especially interested in remote actors, but I guess a complete overview would be helpful to many others. This is a pretty general question, so feel free to answer just for the implementation you know about.

I know about the following Scala Actor implementations (SAI). Please add the missing ones.

Scala 2.7 (difference to)
Scala 2.8
Akka (http://www.akkasource.org/)
Lift (http://liftweb.net/)
Scalaz (http://code.google.com/p/scalaz/)
What are the target use-cases for these SAIs (lightweight vs. "heavy" enterprise framework)?
do they support remote actors? What shortcomings do remote actors have in the SAIs?
How is their performace?
How active is there community?
How easy are they to get started? How good is the documentation?
How easy are they to extend?
How stable are they? Which projects are using them?
What are their shortcomings?
What are their design principles?
- Are they thread based or event based (receive/ react) or both?
- Nested receiveS
- hotswapping the Actor’s message loop

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