Eurydice - the cross-language bridge

Introduction

This is a bridge allowing to call from Python code into Perl and JavaScript, and vice versa. The intention is to seamlessly mix parts written in one or the other without worrying about exactly which language is something written in, and possibly replacing a library with an equivalent one in a different language without modifying the rest of the code.

While similar goal can be achieved using Protocol Buffers or Thrift, they only allow for calls returning a pre-defined type and do not provide a mechanism for using callbacks. Java RMI allows for callbacks using proxy objects but is neither multilingual nor friendly to dynamic languages.

The intended use is to have a "server" only used for executing "foreign" code while the "client" contains the main execution flow.

Features

• Passing arbitrary objects to either side which can then call methods on them
• Exception propagation from either side

Limitations

• The transport is TCP sockets without any authentication
• The serialization is using JSON
• Exceptions are not typed (thank you, Perl)

TODO

• Pluggable transports and serializations
• Embedding the "foreign" interpreter in the host process
• Performance optimizations