On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 7:08 PM, Richard Cleis <[email protected]> wrote: > Can you provide an example? (At this point, one of the profs around here > asserts, "Code, please." :)
You're right, code will clarify this. I should have started out asking what people would recommend to do something. My users end up writing things that look like: ~~~ #lang s-exp bein (execute (run "/bin/touch" "boris") (import "boris") (run-binding ((a 'stdout)) "/bin/echo" "This is a test") (import "This is a test")) ~~~ execute sets up a temporary directory, and each command inside works therein. run is a wrapper around subprocess that does a bunch of behind the scenes work. import pulls a file from the temporary directory into a managed repository (stored in an SQLite database in the user's home directory). execute is nestable as well. For instance, ~~~ (define (f x) (execute (run "/bin/touch" x))) (execute (f "boris") (import "boris")) ~~~ only sets up a single temporary directory. The execute in the function f is flattened into the outermost enclosing execute. This has to run on a cluster. The cluster consists of a couple of frontend machines users log into plus fifty or sixty nodes which do nothing but run batch jobs. The batch jobs are submitted via the commandline or via a C API, and generally look like $ bsub /path/to/program arg1 arg2 ... Basically, it takes shell commands. The C API does as well, but takes an argument of type char**. I want to write a version of execute that submits its body as a batch job via LSF. Once the submission happens it need not maintain any communication with the original process, since the disk (and thus the SQLite database that maintains state) is shared across the cluster. I would also like to be able to write things like ~~~ (define (f x) (execute-lsf ...stuff with x...)) (map f '(list of things to apply f to) ~~~ Someone pointed out serializable continuations in the stateless servlets code to me, which seem like just about the perfect solution, but they seem to be tied into that framework. Any suggestions would be very welcome. -- Frederick Ross Bioinformatics and Biostatistics Core Facility Life Sciences, EPFL http://bbcf.epfl.ch/ +41 21 693 14 39 _________________________________________________ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/users
