The JoCaml system

The JoCaml system is an experimental extension of the Objective-Caml language with the distributed join-calculus programming model. This model includes high-level communication and synchronising channels,mobile agents, failure detection and automatic memory management. JoCaml enables programmers to rapidly develop distributedlarge-scale applications, using both Objective-Caml ease of programmation and extended libraries, and the join-calculus distributed and concurrent features. It can already be viewed as the next-generation Internet programming language.

The distribution

Our implementation is currently only beta-released: JoCaml sources (April 2003 : tar.gz, you can read the license here). This version works on most UNIX platforms, and a port to Windows NT was started in january 2000, partially sponsored by Microsoft Research .

The current distribution contains:

• The Objective-Caml distribution, version 1.07
• The Join library, included in the distribution
• Lots of examples:
  • Bomberman: The famous game, rewritten by Joachim Tordjman.
  • The Netscape Plugins: to run JoCaml applets under Netscape, written from Calves by Joachim Tordjman.
  • Pong: The pong game, written by Sylvain Conchon.
  • Bataille: The navy war game, written by Sylvain Conchon.
  • Tron : The tron game, written in join by Luc Maranget, and translated in JoCaml by Fabrice Le Fessant.
  • Mandel: 3 versions of the mandelbrot fractal, written by Luc Maranget for the join system, and translated by Fabrice Le Fessant. One of these versions is a program mixing bytecode and native code.
  • Hevea server: a patch to apply to HeVea 1.01, to make it move as a mobile agent from a server to different clients.

Documentation

• The JoCaml tutorial and reference manual
• As the JoCaml mailing list was only receiving spam, it has been discontinued.
• The Objective-Caml 1.07 reference manual
• The join-calculus reference manual

Papers on the Implementation

• On JoCaml language JoCaml: mobile agents for Objective-Caml, by Sylvain Conchon and Fabrice Le Fessant, ASA/MA'99
• On join-pattern compilation: Compiling Join-Patterns, by Fabrice Le Fessant and Luc Maranget, HLCL'98.
• On join-calculus typing: Implicit Typing à la ML for the join-calculus, by Cédric Fournet, Cosimo Laneve, Luc Maranget and Didier Rémy, CONCUR'97.

Papers on the Join-calculus

• The join-calculus model of concurrency: The reflexive chemical abstract machine and the join-calculus, by Cédric Fournet and Georges Gonthier, POPL'96.
• On distributed programming: A calculus of mobile agents, by Cédric Fournet, Georges Gonthier, Jean-Jacques Lévy, Luc Maranget and Didier Rémy, CONCUR'96.
• On testing equivalence: May and Must Testing in the Join-Calculus, by C. Laneve. Technical Report UBLCS 96-04, University of Bologna, March 1996.