World: r4wp

For discussion of Extensions:
    http://www.rebol.com/r3/docs/concepts/extensions.html

R3 extension will open the door to many usefull extensions now. We 
should collect the current status of existing extensions and of course
new ones we like to see. 
Quick check on current extensions (lib based) :
cURL, ZMQ, ODBC, FMOD, IMagick...


Another area is what is the best practice to create and maintain 
embedded extensions, how to integrate a dynamic built for this how 
to organize the source tree.

Currently I am working on a embedded cgi extension as a testcase, 
this will lead also into questions like: mezz or native, embedded 
or lib?

Extensions on my list:
CGI, JSON, POSIX, PCRE and some math libs.

Good initiative, Tomas. For CGI, I think you should get by purely 
with mezzanine code (environment, stdin, stdout).

Good initiative Sunanda

(And I think technically, no native code would make CGI not really 
an extension, but a "delayed embedded module".)

(See http://www.rebol.net/r3blogs/0280.html)

...we wouldn't need of 2 standard versions of Rebol (core and view)...

That would be great, I remember that it was very confusing to me 
to have Core, Base, View, Face, Command etc.

Giuseppe -- thanks, but it was TomBon's idea in the SELF group.

Andreas, yes exactly these considerations are important because the 
sore temptation could lead into an overload and therefore polluted 
R3 with embedded extensions beyond a usefull 'R3 with batteries included' 
;-) 

there are tons of usefull libs and free code out there, compression, 
crypto, text processing, serialisation, image manipulation, audio, 
math, ai and very important;  db connectors. filling these areas 
step by step is a lot of work but I think it's worth. As soon R3 
has reached a stable structure (couple of weeks I think) a new bounty 
system should be established for extensions we need but haven't the 
time or skills to create those. Just now I started with a simple 
one to get a feeling for the handling and any advise in this is highly 
appreciated.

Which library do you suggest for universal DB connection ?

Guiseppe, I'm going to add my ODBC extension, which is already available 
as dll. It's Windows only for now, but with the sources available, 
incorporation of Linux and Mac ports shouldn't be a problem.

There are several DB layer aggregators like OpenDBX, libDBI or even 
APR (as a function part). Problem here is most of them are looking 
outdated.

Afaict some of the ODBC APIs for Unix/Linux are kept up to date. 
Supporting those too would be a good idea. ODBC isn't Windows-specific.

Some NOSQL connectors would be fine too, not all supporting a straight 
REST interface. MongoDB, Redis and Tokyo/Kyoto offers a very clean 
C api.

http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/OpenDBX
http://sqlapi.com/
http://sqlrelay.sourceforge.net/about.html

Tomas, if you're working on Windows, you can write your extension 
in Red/System, using the dyn-lib-emitter branch of Red:

http://red.esperconsultancy.nl/Red-REBOL-3

Kaj, thx for the info. now I am on the serverside (nix) to compare 
the handling and performance with the current Lua stack I am using.

Would be great if we could work on some extensions later, on the 
base we did before if you like ;-)

I'm open to it. R3 extensions in Red/System on Unix requires the 
dyn-lib-emitter branch to be finished and extended to other platforms

Alternatively, a Red(/System) host could be written that loads the 
R3 library, but that's not so simple, because there's no real separation 
in the R3 host code between the platform-specific and cross-platform 
parts of the host. That means you're almost forced to write the host 
in C, pulling in the existing C code

should Red/System not be advertised/pomoted a bit more as a better 
way to write rebol extensions, now that Rebol is OS? I mean, it should 
be listed on the Rebol GitHub project as the best way, if indeed 
it is. Possible on rebol.com, if Carl would allow it.

possible = possibly

I think so, but only after the dyn-lib-emitter branch is finished

any ETA on that?

Ask Doc :-)

I should get back to it around early January.

Well, I am not good at those things, but having R3 extensions written 
in R/S seems a good oportunity to those, who are not much fluent 
in C, and always wished for more flexible R2 DLL interface, no? :-)

we have:
- COM Interface
- BEEP
- SQLite
- Licensing support functions

Great, will setup a page the next days, to list the current extensions 
with description/download link to get a better overview.

Just running the first embedded POSIX prototype here with a bunch 
of usefull functions like pid handling, fork, nanosleep, popen, execve, 
sig, pipe etc.

Pekr, Yes!!

Robert, do you have a download link for your extensions mentioned 
above?

Not yet. Still building it up.

BEEP = Blocks Extensible Exchange Protocol ?

Yes.