[kepler-dev] Combining the CommandLine and Exec actors

[Bertram Ludaescher]

Bilsay:

For the benefit of all those CommandLine and Exec actor fans, maybe
you could send a brief summary of the new actor's interface and
workings.  (I just sent a similar suggestion in a separate email to
Ilkay, but since you had your hands on this particular code recently,
you might have that handy already ;-).  Or else, if that's part of the
documentation one gets when checking out the latest Kepler code,
that's fine too (although I won't be able to do that until I get my
laptop plugged into the internet again..)

If I remember right, as part of the standard Kepler documentation
framework, there are provisions for some concise documentation in the
style of man pages. Sending that information around might be a good
"advertisement" for new general-purpose actors.

To see what I mean, type in your Linux or Unix or Cygwin shell:

$ man cp 
(this shows the man(ual) page of the 'cp' (=copy) command)

or for another variant type

$ cp --help

you might also want to try 

$ man man 

;-)

Bertram




bilsay at sdsc.edu writes:
 > Hi,
 > 
 > After what Dan said I added a parameter 'waitForProcess' which can be
 > switched on/off to select whether to do a waitFor() or destroy().It should
 > be working but to tell the truth I am having diffuculties in testing it
 > because most of the commands I execute are returning their outputs
 > immediately and exiting.I tried with a few long running executable
 > files,and it worked.But if you are asking does it work when I type $ myjob
 > &? Yes,it does.
 > 
 > I hope the actor will satisfy the needs.What I did was combining and
 > adding a few new things.At least it does what the previous actors were
 > able to do and maybe more because the threads seem to work better now.Feel
 > free to ask anything.
 > 
 > Bilsay
 > 
 > 
 > > Dan, Bilsay et al:
 > >
 > > In order to return control immediately w/o waiting for the initiated
 > > command/subprocess to finish, it should be possible to use "&", at
 > > least in Unix-style systems, right?
 > >
 > > So the good old
 > > 	$ myjob &
 > > would run myjob in the background.
 > >
 > > But then again, for platform independence it might be better to have a
 > > parameter to the Cmd-Line actor that determines whether control is
 > > returned immediately (a la "backgrounding") or after command
 > > completetion.
 > >
 > > Ptolemy-hackers:
 > >
 > > Are there any directors (or could one conceive variants of the
 > > existing ones) that are particularly well-suited/well-behaved with
 > > Command-Line actor instances that return immediately?
 > >
 > > Bertram
 > >
 > > Dan Higgins writes:
 > > ..
 > >  > Finally, one option that I don't think we have considered in Exec or
 > >  > CommandLine is to launch a process and NOT wait for it to complete.
 > >  > (Currently I think we always use a 'waitFor()' method). This would be
 > >  > primarily of use for launching completely different applications for
 > >  > output/display at the end of a Kepler workflow. There are some
 > > occasions
 > >  > when this would be useful.
 > > ...
 > >