observation-execution-tool¶
Project description¶
This project contains the code for the Observation Execution Tool (OET), the application which provides high-level scripting facilities and a high-level scripting UI for the SKA.
Overview¶
The OET is made up of two components that work together to provide the required functionality:
- The OET REST Server [1] maintains a list of the scripts that have been loaded and their current state. The server implements the interface specified by the OET Rest API.
- The OET REST Client provides a Command Line Interface (CLI) to the OET REST Server. It does this by translating and communicating HTTP messages to and from the server.
| [1] | Representational State Transfer (REST) is an architectural style that guarantees interopability between computer systems on the internet. |
Quickstart¶
This project is structured to use Docker containers for development and
testing so that the build environment, test environment and test results are
all completely reproducible and are independent of host environment. It uses
make to provide a consistent UI (see Makefile targets).
Build a new Docker image for the OET with:
make build
Execute the test suite and lint the project with:
make test-all
Launch an interactive shell inside a container, with your workspace visible inside the container:
make interactive
Makefile targets¶
This project contains a Makefile which acts as a UI for building Docker images, testing images, and for launching interactive developer environments. The following make targets are defined:
| Makefile target | Description |
|---|---|
| build | Build a new application image |
| test-all | Test and lint the application image |
| test | Test the application image |
| lint | Lint the application image |
| interactive | Launch a minimal Tango system (including the device under development), mounting the source directory from the host machine inside the container |
| piplock | Overwrite the Pipfile.lock in the source with the generated version from the application image |
| push | Push the application image to the Docker registry |
| up | launch the development/test container service on which this application depends |
| down | stop all containers launched by ‘make up’ and ‘make interactive’ |
| rest | start the OET REST server |
| help | show a summary of the makefile targets above |
Creating a new application image¶
make build target creates a new Docker image for the application based
on the ‘ska-python-runtime’ image. To optimise final image size and to support
the inclusion of C extension Python libraries such as pytango, the application
is built inside an intermediate Docker image which includes compilers and
cached eggs and wheels for commonly-used Python libraries
(‘ska-python-builder’). The resulting Python environment from this
intermediate stage is copied into a final image which extends a minimal SKA
Python runtime environment (‘ska-python-runtime’), to give the final Docker
image for this application.
Interactive development using containers¶
make interactive launches an interactive session using the application
image, mounting the project source directory at /app inside the container.
This allows the container to run code from the local workspace. Any changes
made to the project source code will immediately be seen inside the container.
Test execution¶
make test runs the application test procedure defined in
test-harness/Makefile in a temporary container. The Makefile example for
this project runs ‘python setup.py test’ and copies the resulting output and
test artefacts out of the container and into a ‘build’ directory, ready for
inclusion in the CI server’s downloadable artefacts.
REST server¶
make rest starts the OET REST server. Details of the REST API can be
found in Rest API. Instructions on how to use the REST client
can be found here: REST Client.
Feature flags¶
Some of the OET behaviour is configurable at run time via a configuration file, oet.ini. This can either be the default file, located in the project folder which can be editted by the user, or a user specified version of the file, located in the user’s home directory. If for some reason no config file is found, the toggles are set to their default values ie. Polling.
Currently the toggle option are:
| Toggle | Type | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| read_via_pubsub | Boolean | sets whether pubsub or the alternative, polling, is used to read from tango | False |