Split up cogserver into three parts.

[linas]

The cogserver is mashup of three unrelated concepts; it would probably work better if it was detangled into those components more cleanly. It is:

• A network shell server. Like telnet, but different.
• A command shell. Like bash, but different. With "pluggable modules" (e.g. PythonModule)
• A cooperative-multi-tasking framework, for the cooperative scheduling of "MindAgents".

These three are currently in somewhat questionable state of repair, and it might even be very wise to re-imagine the architecture/design from the ground-up.

• The multi-tasking ("Agents") framework is lame, and is little more than a REPL loop. The dream of the multi-tasking framework was to somehow manage tasks and set priorities for them (allocating CPU resources), but forcing all agents to be cooperative multi-taskers causes well-known issues (MS Windows3.1 and Apple OS9 from late 1980's illustrated the possibilities and the limitations very clearly.)

• The command-shell is kind of goofy, like somebody's school project. It expects new commands to be implemented as dynamically loaded shared libraries, with a very strict API about what is and is not allowed, which makes it very hard to create high-quality modules. Giving the command shell a minimalist design would simplify it, make it work better/less awkwardly.

• The network server is the most debugged and mostly quite stable. I would have recommended discarding it, replacing it with some other open-source project, except I once searched the internet for a drop-in replacement, and (surprisingly) found none. Maybe the world needs a generic shell-server!? Biggest problem with the network server is it provides zero authentication, zero security. (it's not obvious how to rip it out and replace it by ssh, for example)

I can kind-of see why all three components are interesting, but given the limitations, they need to be reimagined from the ground-up.

[vsbogd]

Added comment about how to preserve history when moving files into another repo: opencog/opencog#3391 (comment)

[linas]

See also opencog/opencog#3391

[linas]

I've moved the code around, to make this split easier.

• The networking code is now in opencog/network and one can use it to write network servers that do not require opencog.
• The Agent multi-tasking code is now a loadable cogserver module, located in opencog/cogserver/modules/agents.
• The builtin commands were moved to their own directory, to make reading the code easier.
• The cogserver ties together the module management system, the command system, and the network server.

The module system should probably be split out into it's own thing ...

[linas]

The code reorg is done. Further work in this direction seems impractical, not really required. Closing.