Swift Executing app procedures
This section describes how Swift executes app procedures, and requirements on the behaviour of application programs used in app procedures. These requirements are primarily to ensure that the Swift can run your application in different places and with the various fault tolerance mechanisms in place.
Mapping of app semantics into unix process execution semantics
This section describes how an app procedure invocation is translated into a (remote) unix process execution. It does not describe the mechanisms by which Swift performs that translation; that is described in the next section.
In this section, this example Swift script is used for reference:
type file;
app (file o) count(file i) {
wc @i stdout=@o;
}
file q <"input.txt">;
file r <"output.txt">The executable for wc will be looked up in tc.data.
This unix executable will then be executed in some application procedure workspace. This means:
Each application procedure workspace will have an application workspace directory. (TODO: can collapse terms application procedure workspace and application workspace directory ?
This application workspace directory will not be shared with any other application procedure execution attempt; all application procedure execution attempts will run with distinct application procedure workspaces. (for the avoidance of doubt: If a Swift script procedure invocation is subject to multiple application procedure execution attempts (due to Swift-level restarts, retries or replication) then each of those application procedure execution attempts will be made in a different application procedure workspace. )
The application workspace directory will be a directory on a POSIX filesystem accessible throughout the application execution
by the application executable.
Before the application executable is executed:
• The application workspace directory will exist.
• The input files will exist inside the application workspace directory (but not necessarily as direct children; there may be subdirectories within the application workspace directory).
• The input files will be those files mapped to input parameters of the application procedure invocation. (In the example, this means that the file input.txt will exist in the application workspace directory)
• For each input file dataset, it will be the case that @filename or @filenames invoked with that dataset as a parameter will return the path relative to the application workspace directory for the file(s) that are associated with that dataset. (In the example, that means that @i will evaluate to the path input.txt)
• For each file-bound parameter of the Swift procedure invocation, the associated files (determined by data type?) will always exist.
• The input files must be treated as read only files. This may or may not be enforced by unix file system permissions. They may or may not be copies of the source file (conversely, they may be links to the actual source file). During/after the application executable execution, the following must be true:
• If the application executable execution was successful (in the opinion of the application executable), then the application executable should exit with unix return code 0; if the application executable execution was unsuccessful (in the opinion of the application executable), then the application executable should exit with unix return code not equal to 0.
• Each file mapped from an output parameter of the Swift script procedure call must exist. Files will be mapped in the same way as for input files.
• The output subdirectories will be precreated before execution by Swift if defined within a Swift script such as the location attribute of a mapper. App executables expect to make them if they are referred to in the wrapper scripts.
• Output produced by running the application executable on some inputs should be the same no matter how many times, when or where
hat application executable is run. The same can vary depending on application (for example, in an application it might be acceptable for a PNG→JPEG conversion to produce different, similar looking, output jpegs depending on the environment)
Things to not assume:
• Anything about the path of the application workspace directory
• That either the application workspace directory will be deleted or will continue to exist or will remain unmodified after execution has finished
• That files can be passed between application procedure invocations through any mechanism except through files known to Swift through the mapping mechanism (there is some exception here for external datasets - there are a separate set of assertions that hold for external datasets)
• That application executables will run on any particular site of those available, or than any combination of applications will run on the same or different sites.