Module actor 

Actor framework — a lightweight actor model built on Tokio channels.

This module provides a minimal actor system inspired by Alice Ryhl’s “Actors with Tokio” guide. Actors communicate via typed messages over channels and run on the Tokio async runtime.

Architecture

• Actor trait — defines the message handling interface
• ActorContext — per-actor context with peer ID, router address, and child actor management
• Addr — a clonable, hashable address for sending messages to an actor

Channel Types

Actors can use either unbounded or bounded channels:

• Unbounded (default) — ActorContext::start_actor creates an actor with an unbounded channel. No backpressure; messages are always enqueued.
• Bounded — ActorContext::start_actor_bounded creates an actor with a bounded channel of the given capacity. When full, Addr::send returns Err(()), applying backpressure. Used for storage write actors where unbounded queue growth is undesirable.

Both channel types are abstracted behind [AddrSender]/[AddrReceiver] enums, so callers use the same Addr::send API regardless of channel type.

Message Flow

Sender → Addr.send(msg) → Channel (bounded or unbounded)
                               ↓
                         Actor.handle(msg, ctx)
                               ↓
                         Actor can:
                         - spawn child actors
                         - send to router
                         - spawn child tasks

Shutdown

Actors are stopped via a stop signal channel. When the context’s stop() method is called, all child tasks are aborted and stop signals are sent to all child actors.

Structs

ActorContext

Per-actor context providing access to runtime services.

Addr

A clonable, hashable address for sending messages to an actor.

Traits

Actor

The core actor trait.