Actor Model

The actor model, a concurrent computing model, is the central idea of Imlight.

An "actor," or self-contained, enclosed object that contains its own state and behaviors, is the basic computational unit in the actor model. Each actor is an instance of an object in the context of C# and Imlight.

Immutable messages are used by actors to communicate, and messages are processed sequentially and in FIFO order by each actor.

You send messages in lieu of calling methods. A message can be sent from one actor to another via tell, a transmitter that is fire-and-forget. Conversely, in a situation when the recipient is expected to respond to the caller, an actor may ask for a reply.

Every actor must exist as the child of another actor. This parent actor is known as a supervisor to all of its children. When an exception is thrown from an actor, the actor's supervisor is responsible for managing the outcome.

Imlight's Actor System

Imlight's director creates the Imlight actor system.

There are then two child actors of the system itself: Login and Patch.