CAF: C++ Actor Framework

CAF: C++ Actor Framework

CAF is an open source C++11 actor model implementation featuring lightweight & fast actor implementations, pattern matching for messages, network transparent messaging, and more.

Online Resources

• Homepage : http://www.actor-framework.org
• Developer Blog : http://blog.actor-framework.org
• Doxygen : http://www.actor-framework.org/doc
• HTML Manual : https://actor-framework.readthedocs.io
• PDF Manual : http://www.actor-framework.org/pdf/manual.pdf

Report Bugs / Get Help

• Open Issues on GitHub : https://github.com/actor-framework/actor-framework/issues/new
• Ask Questions on StackOverflow : https://stackoverflow.com/questions/ask?tags=c%2b%2b-actor-framework

Community

• Chat : https://gitter.im/actor-framework/chat
• Twitter : https://twitter.com/actor_framework
• User Mailing List : https://groups.google.com/d/forum/actor-framework
• Developer Mailing List : https://groups.google.com/d/forum/caf-devel
• Feature Proposals : https://github.com/actor-framework/evolution

Get CAF

FreeBSD Ports

We maintain a port for CAF, which you can install as follows:

pkg install caf

Alternatively, you can go to /usr/ports/devel/caf and tweak a few configuration options before installing the port:

make config
make install clean

Homebrew

You can install the latest stable release with:

brew install caf

Alternatively, you can use the current development version by using:

brew install caf --HEAD

Conan

A Conan recipe for CAF along with pre-built libraries for most platforms are available at bincrafters/caf .

VCPKG

You can build and install CAF using vcpkg dependency manager with a single command:

vcpkg install caf

The caf port in vcpkg is kept up to date by Microsoft team members and community contributors.

Get the Sources

• git clone https://github.com/actor-framework/actor-framework.git
• cd actor-framework

Build CAF from Source

The easiest way to build CAF is to use the configure script. Other available options are using CMake directly or SNocs .

Using the configure Script

The script is a convenient frontend for CMake . See configure -h for a list of available options or read the online documentation .

./configure
make
make test
make install [as root, optional]

Using CMake

All available CMake variables are available online . CAF also can be included as CMake submodule or added as dependency to other CMake-based projects using the file cmake/FindCAF.cmake .

Using SNocs

A SNocs workspace is provided by GitHub user osblinnikov and documented online .

Dependencies

thread_local

Supported Compilers

• GCC >= 7
• Clang >= 4
• MSVC >= 2019

Supported Operating Systems

• Linux
• Mac OS X
• FreeBSD 10
• Windows >= 7 (currently static builds only)

Optional Dependencies

doxygen
manual

Build the Manual

CAF uses Sphinx :

cd manual
sphinx-build . html

Scientific Use

If you use CAF in a scientific context, please use one of the following citations:

@inproceedings{cshw-nassp-13,
  author = {Dominik Charousset and Thomas C. Schmidt and Raphael Hiesgen and Matthias W{\"a}hlisch},
  title = {{Native Actors -- A Scalable Software Platform for Distributed, Heterogeneous Environments}},
  booktitle = {Proc. of the 4rd ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Systems, Programming, and Applications (SPLASH '13), Workshop AGERE!},
  pages = {87--96},
  month = {Oct.},
  year = {2013},
  publisher = {ACM},
  address = {New York, NY, USA}
}

@article{chs-rapc-16,
  author = {Dominik Charousset and Raphael Hiesgen and Thomas C. Schmidt},
  title = {{Revisiting Actor Programming in C++}},
  journal = {Computer Languages, Systems \& Structures},
  volume = {45},
  year = {2016},
  month = {April},
  pages = {105--131},
  publisher = {Elsevier}
}

You can find the papers online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2541329.2541336 and http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cl.2016.01.002 .