[Swift-devel] Drop kickstart, adopt wrapper logs?

[Mihael Hategan]

On Fri, 2008-07-25 at 11:06 -0500, Michael Wilde wrote:
> If you do take this off for weekend work (which sounds like a good idea, 
> modulo the weekend part ;) lets first set a design decision making 
> process on the issues that have been raised in discussions to date:

Well, it was about removing kickstart which is somewhat different from
improving the wrapper to be like kickstart.

But we should discuss this.

> 
> - arg passing

It's there.

> - what it captures
>    - time, mem

I suppose regular snapshots of those.

>    - env (in the broad sense)

I think it's there.

>    - file state

?

> - output format(s)

?

> - snapshotting for monitoring an app run

?

> - controls for start, stop, pause

?

> - how it integrates in CoG, GRAM, Condor, other LRMs, Coaster, Falkon, 
> and Swift

It's the wrapper.

> - how it relates to "accounting" projects in OSG and TG

?

> - ideas on streaming output

As in stdout?

> - idead on batching output
> - interaction with a collective I/O toolkit/model
> - other stuff???
> 
> Its worth looking at what Jens did in "kickstart v2", what he called 
> "k2", in the VDS CVS.  It had conventions to deal with passing args in a 
> file stream rather than command line to tunnel through what at the time 
> were cli length limits and arg escape problems in Condor

We should try not to make the wrapper a bad substitute for a bad job
manager. In other words I don't think it should fix too many problems.

> 
> I feel this merits a design effort, and propose that we try this as an 
> experiment in doing design in a way that can get group input do decision 
> making in an effective and pleasing way.

So we should first decide what we're talking about:
1. Logging of application stuff (i.e. providing information similar to
kickstart)
2. Fixin' problems in Condor and GRAM

I think it should only be a focused thing around (1).