[kepler-dev] ptexecute problems?

[Dan Higgins]

Hi All,

    I have been looking at the 'ptexecute' target in ant (more 
accurately, I have been using 'ptexecute-dev' which, like 'run-dev' 
avoids the long jar process in running the target.) I have been getting 
some strange results.

    First of all, I created a test workflow called 'NonstrictTest.xml' 
(in $KEPLER/workflows/test/). As configured, this trivial workflow has a 
NonstrictTest actor that expects a result of '4'. It is connected to an 
Expression actor that gives it a token equal to '5'. Thus, if you run 
the workflow in Kepler, it throws an exception. However, if I execute

ant ptexecute-dev -Dworkflow=C:/work/kepler/workflows/test/NonstrictTest.xml

this ant task runs and gives no indication of any problem!

However, if I change the test workflow to execute OK (by changing the 
input to the NonstrictTest actor), the ptexecute-dev task gives the result

     [java] 47 ms. Memory: 3136K Free: 491K (16%)

(which is what one sees in the terminal window if the workflow executes 
completely).

So, my first problem is that ptexecute does not seem to generate any 
error when the workflow fails!

    The next problem is with workflows that contain eml-datasources. All 
of these immediately return with no indication of errors. However, there 
are no messages from actors in the workflows subsequent to the 
datasource. It looks like the datasource is just terminating the 
execution of the workflow. I suspect that this is just due to ptexecute 
not waiting for the initialization thread of the datasource to complete!

So, it looks to me like we cannot use ptexecute to test workflow 
operation (since there are not errors when there are exceptions), and 
ptexecute cannot be used with datasources that use threads in 
initialization!  (Of course, maybe I am missing something here; I 
haven't really looked into the ptexecute code.)

Dan

-- 
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Dan Higgins                                  higgins at nceas.ucsb.edu
http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/    Ph: 805-893-5127
National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) Marine Science Building - Room 3405
Santa Barbara, CA 93195
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