InSocket: Use epoll instead of select

[Chris Miller]

On Thu, 11 Jan 2007 08:07:01 -0500, chmike  
<christophe_no_spam at meessen.net> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I am considering using D for an ORB like application and I am confused  
> about
> Socket class providing select. select is known for years to be  
> inefficient.
> Various solutions have been proposed to solve this and the later one  
> (epoll)
> is the most efficient one.
>
> D should really consider moving to epoll API. I am using epoll for my  
> server
> applications.  To keep my code portable on windows I wrote the three  
> epoll API
> calls wrapping use of select inside.
>
> select requires to poll sockets for event, where epoll returns a list of
> socket that had an event. The effort with select is proportional to the  
> number
> of sockets regardless of their activity. With epoll it is proportional  
> to the
> effective activity. idle connections don't waste CPU. epoll scales very  
> well.
>

It was known that select() is pretty inefficient, but was provided because  
it's most portable and something to get your project going. Alternatives  
were considered but not yet pursued.