[kepler-dev] Combining the CommandLine and Exec actors

[bilsay at sdsc.edu]

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.
> ...
>