On Fri, Aug 24, 2001 at 12:05:59AM -0700, Aaron Bannert wrote: > Unfortunately that is not the case. A urllist is simply a list of > urls, it has no implicit ideas of being serial or parallel. We have > only implemented a roundrobin-style profile, which happens to use > a urllist in a serial manner, but there is no reason the same > urllist couldn't be used by a hundred farmers all in parallel > and in some bizarre non-linear manner (like random-weighted, for > example).
Okay, point taken. The code and typical usage intends for it to be serial. Think of all the response/request regex stuff. That implication is fairly strong. Yes, you can replace the round robin profile with something completely separate. However, I don't see anyone rushing to do that. This may be where we differ from httperf the most - they are solely a framework for a test tool - their tool, as is, can't do lots of stuff. Flood, while a framework itself, is also a test tool that stands by itself. There's a difference between the framework section and the actual implementation of flood. Consider it design vs. implementation. I consider flood's design period to be over and it's implementation drawing to a close. I don't expect/want to do much more coding with it. Minor features and such. Possibly new protocols (waka?), but nothing earth-shattering. Yes, bucket brigades would be nice. But, I'm ready to move on. I don't want to live with this code for the rest of my life... It's done what I/eBuilt wanted and it's done it fairly well. The framework is laid down for others to come through and continue our goals. This is sort of why I want to switch to evangelical mode and get people *using* flood. If people use it, they will see what they like about it and what they dislike about it. They can then continue on with the development of this tool. I can't take it much farther than I already have... This is also an ideal time for us to stop and try and document it so that other people can pick up on flood. Why is it a good time? I'm going on vacation for three weeks next week (as is Roy). You're going to start a new job soon. We're not going to be able to babysit this project much longer. My goal with the user docs is to document what we HAVE right now. The design docs can indicate what we intend. But, as far as the current implementation goes, no one (other than you or I) care about the design too much - they want to use it. (And, if you think about how httpd started, the people who *used* NCSA took over *development* because they had changes they wished to see in the product that weren't there in the first place.) How to use flood intelligently isn't something we have any docs on right now. I hope I can come up with stuff so that Apache Random Hacker can figure it out. If they want to change the code or the design after finding flaws, it's open source - sit down, read the code, and have lots of fun. I'll even make sure anyone has commit access to this repository if they want it. -- justin
