Akka Startup Spec

[Zetanova]

The current akka startup (including remote and cluster) is depends currently heavily on thread-locks to synchronize.
This happens most of the time over Lazy<Extension>.Value of AkkaSystem._extensions.

Because the caller of a lazy loaded extension is most of the time an actor, the call sequence is none deterministic.
An other issue is that a hit on the lock of Lazy<Extension>.Value produces a relative long lock period.

We would need to decide what startup features are required and then how we should implement them.

Here some ideas from my side:

• Support of AkkaSystem.StartAsync and AkkaSystem.StopAsync
• Inducing of an Interface to mark a component async initializable
• A mechanisms to check if an extension was initialized

One idea would be to create an ExtensionManager actor,
that would lazy create/supervise all extensions and publish an ExtensionLoaded event on the EventStream.
All other components could subscribe and/or request extensions similar to the current ClusterState Events.

[Aaronontheweb]

I need to respond to this - sorry for the delay. Had a lot going on over the holidays and during the start of 2022 thus far.

[eaba]

Can I call this "Akka Improvement Proposal (AIP)"?

@Zetanova I like this idea. Please can you come up with more detail as follows:

• Approach: how do we approach the implementation.
• API Changes: API changes we need to be aware of with code samples
• Internal Changes: What are the internal changes with code samples
• Compatibility: Will this introduce any compatibility issue
• Tests plan: What are the test plan to verify changes with code sample. Unit tests and integration tests!

Any idea that will help to improve Akka.NET is always welcomed, however, if you provide more detail, it will help the team in accepting and working on it.

Please include additional code samples where possible.

[Zetanova]

This Points are exactly what I want to discuss here.
and to create a AIP from the Ideas collected.

[eaba]

Do you have any idea on how we can approach this? Let start with that first. @Aaronontheweb