CAF: C++ Actor Framework

CAF is an open source implementation of the actor model for C++ 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
• Manual: https://actor-framework.readthedocs.io
• Doxygen: https://codedocs.xyz/actor-framework/actor-framework

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 Conan Center.

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
cd build
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. The latter can be achieved by calling

find_package(CAF REQUIRED)

in respective project's CMake file. CAF's install location (e.g. by providing the CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH option) has to be known.

Using SNocs

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

Dependencies

• CMake
• Pthread (until C++11 compilers support the new thread_local keyword)

Supported Compilers

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

Supported Operating Systems

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

Build Documentation Locally

• Building an offline version of the manual requires Sphinx:

  cd manual
  sphinx-build . html

• Building an offline version of the API reference documentation requires Doxygen (simply run the doxygen command at the root directory of the repository).

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.