Short:        Virtual amiga-like OS and network layer
Author:       timm s. mueller
Uploader:     tmueller neoscientists org
Type:         dev/misc
Version:      0.32
Requires:     os3.0, amigasdk 1.01, morphos, linux 2.x
Architecture: m68k-amigaos; ppc-morphos


  TEKlib v0.32
  helium release
  
  (c) 2001 by TEK neoscientists
  all rights reserved.


overview
----------------------------------------------

  TEKlib is a virtual operating system, middleware, and IPC
  layer. it provides portable services for
  
    - memory management 
    - timers 
    - mutexes 
    - events 
    - threads 
    - message IPC 
    - network transparency 
  
  TEKlib implements an ultra-thin¹ abstraction to a host's
  kernel, with currently two layers entirely differing in
  respect to naming conventions and abstraction levels. an
  implementation of the lower layer ('kernelspace') provides a
  port to another platform. the upper layer ('tekspace') is
  fully portable, and applications written for that API
  compile flawlessly, without modifications, on all supported
  platforms.
  
  currently TEKlib supports an ANSI C conformant API for the
  following platforms:
  
    - Linux/32bit²
    - TAO Elate/AmigaSDK 1.01 
    - AmigaOS 3.x 
    - MorphOS 
  
  examples in C and documentation in plain text, amigaguide,
  HTML, and PDF are included.
  
  ¹ currently less than 30k of binary code
  
  ² mostly POSIX compliant, but untested on other operating
  systems and architectures; for porting see kn/linux/exec.c


key benefits
----------------------------------------------

  - well-defined multitasking semantics for atomic, explicit,
    massive parallelity

  - tasks are autonomous entities supplied with means for
    communication; communicating tasks can be passed around like
    objects

  - realtime conformant design

  - fine-grained, recursive memory management, including
    memory pools, optimized reallocation strategies,
    thread-safety, cleanup handling

  - reliable, unified messaging semantics for synchronous and
    asynchronous IPC in both local address space and via network

  - protocol-agnostic messaging layer, currently implemented
    with TCP/IP sockets

  - small, robust, fault-tolerant, fast, portable, fully
    re-entrant, not limited to a particular compiler

  - open source, BSD style licensing model.


security warning
----------------------------------------------

  this library is targetted to creating distributed software in
  the long run. at its current development stage, it lacks the
  implementation of a fully-fledged security philosophy. don't let
  networked TEKlib applications listen on privileged port numbers,
  and don't announce messageports outside of trusted environments
  for now.


requirements
----------------------------------------------

  known, tested, recommended configurations

  Linux     - 2.2 and 2.4 kernel series, gcc 2.95.2, 
              libpthreads, libX11 (optional)
  
  AmigaOS   - AmigaOS 3.x, bsdsocket.library v4,
              guigfx.library and render.library (optional),
              SAS/C 6.5x or egcs 2.91.66

  TAO Elate - AmigaSDK 1.01, vpcc 2.0
  
  MorphOS   - bsdsocket.library v4, guigfx.library and
              render.library (optional), gcc 2.95.2
  

authors
----------------------------------------------

  timm s. mueller
  tmueller@neoscientists.org

  daniel adler
  dadler@neoscientists.org

  visit the TEKlib homepage:
  www.neoscientists.org/~bifat/teklib/