The Inter-Language Unification system (ILU) is a multi-language object interface system. The object interfaces provided by ILU hide implementation distinctions between different languages, between different address spaces, and between operating system types. ILU can be used to build multi-lingual object-oriented libraries ("class libraries") with well-specified language-independent interfaces. It can also be used to implement distributed systems. It can also be used to define and document interfaces between the modules of non-distributed programs. ILU interfaces can be specified in either the OMG's CORBA Interface Definition Language (OMG IDL), or ILU's Interface Specification Language (ISL).
ILU 2.0 supports the programming languages C++ (Corba2 mapping), ANSI C, Python, Java, and Common Lisp. Contributed support is also available for Modula-3, Guile Scheme, and Perl 5. ILU has been installed on most flavors of UNIX (SunOS, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, OSF, IRIX, FreeBSD, Linux, LynxOS, SCO Unix, etc.) and MS-Windows (3.1, 95, NT). It supports both threaded (POSIX, Solaris, NT, Franz ACL, PPCR, Modula-3) and event-loop (Xt, Tk, XView) operation. One of the implementation goals is to maximize compatibility with existing open standards. As a result, ILU provides support for use of the OMG CORBA IDL interface description language, and can be thought of as a CORBA ORB system (though with omissions from and extensions to the CORBA spec). ILU also includes a self-contained implementation of ONC RPC, and it is possible to describe and use existing RPC services as ILU objects. ILU also includes a self-contained implementation of the World Wide Web's Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), and can thus be used to implement object-oriented web browsers and servers. ILU is available free from `ftp://ftp.parc.xerox.com/pub/ilu/ilu.html'.
Revised $Date: 2000/05/30 22:12:58 $ GMT, $Author: janssen $
Earlier alpha releases are also available:
In Europe, Gerd Aschemann has set up a mirror at ftp://ftp.th-darmstadt.de/pub/networking/platforms/CORBA/ilu.
A Russian (and European) mirror of the ILU distribution directory is available from the Russian Academy of Sciences, Chernogolovka Science Center, at ftp://ftp.chg.ru/pub/prog/ilu.
In Brasil, a mirror of the ILU distribution directory is available from the Universidade Estadual de Campinas, at http://ftp.unicamp.br/pub/network/ORB/ilu or ftp://ftp.unicamp.br/pub/network/ORB/ilu
Will Partain points out that the experimental caching FTP service at HENSA UNIX might be of use to residents of the UK.
The mailing list ILU@parc.xerox.com is for discussion of ILU, questions, etc.. To subscribe to the list, please send a message with "subscribe" in the subject or body of the message, to ILUfirstname.lastname@example.org. To unsubscribe from the list, please send a message with "unsubscribe" in the subject or body of the message, to ILUemail@example.com.
Another mailing list, ILUfirstname.lastname@example.org, is only for announcements of ILU releases, and has much less traffic. Any messages sent to ILU-interest will be seen by everyone on ILU, however, so no need to be on both. Again, if you'd like to be on ILU-interest, please send mail with "subscribe" in the body or subject header to ILU-Interestemail@example.com. And to unsubscribe, send mail with "unsubscribe" in the body or subject header. Finally, bug reports and problems with ILU should be reported to ILUfirstname.lastname@example.org, which will cause them to be seen by the right people.
Archives of the ILU mailing lists are available as HyperMail archives.
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