Deviates deliberately from the roadmap's monitor-based sketch
(monitor + wait reply-or-Down-or-deadline + demonitor): server death is
already observable on the reply channel itself - the reply sender drops
as the server unwinds, closing the channel and waking the parked caller.
So a bounded call is exactly recv_timeout on the reply channel, mapping
Disconnected -> ServerDown and Timeout -> Timeout. No registration
exists, so a timed-out call leaks nothing by construction - the
guarantee the monitor design had to engineer.
Semantics on timeout match Erlang: the request stays in the inbox and
is still handled; the late reply's send fails harmlessly against the
dropped reply receiver. CallTimeoutError keeps ServerDown and Timeout
distinguishable; the infallible call() is unchanged.
Tests: reply within deadline, timeout against a slow (parking) handler
with elapsed bounds, server survival across an abandoned call (late
reply discarded, bounded and unbounded calls keep working), and
ServerDown-not-Timeout for both death paths (mid-call panic and
already-gone inbox).
Thin request-reply layer on channels, no runtime change. A server is an
actor owning a GenServer state; clients hold a clonable ServerRef and issue
call (sync, parks for the reply) or cast (fire-and-forget).
- Single inbox carrying an internal Envelope { Call(req, reply_tx) | Cast },
forced by the no-select / no-unified-mailbox invariant; call makes a
one-shot reply channel and parks on it.
- Server-down detection is pure channel closure (no monitor): send fails if
the inbox is gone; the reply sender drops on the server's unwind so a
parked caller wakes to Err. Both collapse to CallError/CastError::ServerDown.
- init/terminate are optional trait hooks; terminate runs via a drop guard so
it fires on every exit path (clean close, panic, request_stop). Must stay
non-blocking — may run mid-unwind.
- ServerRef carries pid() for monitor/request_stop/link; start + start_under.
Tests: cast-then-call roundtrip, init/terminate ordering, both server-down
paths (reply-channel close on handler panic; inbox-send failure when gone).
smarm