C-Ensemble README
AUTHOR: Mark Hayden

C-Ensemble is a by-hand translation of the Ensemble communication
toolkit from the ML programming language to C.  It includes a subset
of the functionality provided by Ensemble.  This software should
currently be considered to be beta-quality.  It has been heavily
tested with the included test programs (which are pretty much the
same programs used to test Ensemble).  However, the software has not
yet been used in production systems nearly as much as Ensemble.

For more information on Ensemble please visit the home pages at:

  Homepage: http://www.cs.technion.ac.il/Labs/csl/projects/Ensemble/
  Download: http://www.cs.technion.ac.il/Labs/csl/projects/Ensemble/license.html

The C-Ensemble library APIs are undocumented, but are very similar to
that of Ensemble.  The architecture and protocols are exactly the
same as those described in the Ensemble reference manual and my
thesis.

A companion software distribution is available from NorthFork
Networks (www.northforknet.com) that includes a number of
applications and toolkit libraries built using C-Ensemble.

Included with the C-Ensemble library is support for the HOT C
interface, which uses the same API as the Ensemble HOT library.  The
HOT C interface should also be usable underneath the Ensemble Maestro
C++ interface, although this has not been tested.

The performance of this library should be approximately the same as
that of the ML library.  The advantages over the ML implementation
result from the implementation in C, which means that the library
does not require the use of the ML runtime library (including garbage
collector), and all of the C-Ensemble API's are directly accessible
from C applications.

NOTE: C-Ensemble requires that IP multicast be supported on your
platform.  Please take a moment to read README.multicast.