[zeromq-dev] Paxos Consensus over ZeroMQ

[Tom Cocagne]

At a meetup just short of a year ago I was asked to post to the list
about a Paxos over ZeroMQ side project I'd been working on. At the
time, the implementation was roughly alpha quality and the code wasn't
particularly clean but it seemed to be fairly well received. For those
that are still interested, I'm pleased to say that the project is now
pretty much complete. All of the major functionality is in place, the
code has been cleaned up, and the documentation is in decent shape.

All of the other open-source Paxos implementations I've found are
either horribly over-complicated or they inextricably commingle their
application-specific logic with their handling of the Paxos algorithm.
While trying to get up to speed on Paxos, I never did find a good,
clean example of it's implementation and use. For that reason, I made
a special effort to gear this implementation specifically for clarity
and ease of understanding. The project is split into two separate
repositories. One implements the bare Paxos algorithm
(https://github.com/cocagne/paxos) and the other uses it on top of
ZeroMQ (https://github.com/cocagne/zpax). Beyond being just generally
useful libraries, I'm hoping these implementations will serve as
approachable examples for others interested in the topic.

Tom