metaphori / experiment-2022-process-management

FCPP Process Management

Project for developing and demonstrating process management techniques.

All commands below are assumed to be issued from the cloned git repository folder. For any issues with reproducing the experiments, please contact Giorgio Audrito.

References

• FCPP main website: https://fcpp.github.io.
• FCPP documentation: http://fcpp-doc.surge.sh.
• FCPP presentation paper: http://giorgio.audrito.info/static/fcpp.pdf.
• FCPP sources: https://github.com/fcpp/fcpp.

Setup

The next sections contain the setup instructions based on the CMake build system for the various supported OSs and virtual containers. Jump to the section dedicated to your system of choice and ignore the others.

Windows

Pre-requisites:

• MSYS2
• Asymptote (for building the plots)
• Doxygen (for building the documentation)

At this point, run "MSYS2 MinGW x64" from the start menu; a terminal will appear. Run the following commands:

pacman -Syu

After updating packages, the terminal will close. Open it again, and then type:

pacman -Sy --noconfirm --needed base-devel mingw-w64-x86_64-toolchain mingw-w64-x86_64-cmake mingw-w64-x86_64-make git

The build system should now be available from the "MSYS2 MinGW x64" terminal.

Linux

Pre-requisites:

• Xorg-dev package (X11)
• G++ 9 (or higher)
• CMake 3.18 (or higher)
• Asymptote (for building the plots)
• Doxygen (for building the documentation)

To install these packages in Ubuntu, type the following command:

sudo apt-get install xorg-dev g++ cmake asymptote doxygen

In Fedora, the xorg-dev package is not available. Instead, install the packages:

libX11-devel libXinerama-devel.x86_6 libXcursor-devel.x86_64 libXi-devel.x86_64 libXrandr-devel.x86_64 mesa-libGL-devel.x86_64

MacOS

Pre-requisites:

• Xcode Command Line Tools
• CMake 3.18 (or higher)
• Asymptote (for building the plots)
• Doxygen (for building the documentation)

To install them, assuming you have the brew package manager, type the following commands:

xcode-select --install
brew install cmake asymptote doxygen

Docker container

Warning: the graphical simulations are based on OpenGL, which is not available in the Docker container. Use this system for batch simulations only.

Download Docker from https://www.docker.com, then you can download the Docker container from GitHub by typing the following command in a terminal:

docker pull docker.pkg.github.com/fcpp/fcpp/container:1.0

Alternatively, you can build the container yourself with the following command:

docker build -t docker.pkg.github.com/fcpp/fcpp/container:1.0 .

Once you have the Docker container locally available, type the following command to enter the container:

docker run -it --volume $PWD:/fcpp --workdir /fcpp docker.pkg.github.com/fcpp/fcpp/container:1.0 bash

and the following command to exit it:

exit

In order to properly link the executables in Docker, you may need to add the -pthread option (substitute -O for -O -pthread below).

Vagrant container

Warning: the graphical simulations are based on OpenGL, which is not available in the Vagrant container. Use this system for batch simulations only.

Download Vagrant from https://www.vagrantup.com and VirtualBox from https://www.virtualbox.org, then type the following commands in a terminal to enter the Vagrant container:

vagrant up
vagrant ssh
cd fcpp

and the following commands to exit it:

exit
vagrant halt

Virtual Machines

If you use a VM with a graphical interface, refer to the section for the operating system installed on it.

Warning: the graphical simulations are based on OpenGL, and common Virtual Machine software (e.g., VirtualBox) has faulty support for OpenGL. If you rely on a virtual machine for graphical simulations, it might work provided that you select hardware virtualization (as opposed to software virtualization). However, it is recommended to use the native OS whenever possible.

Execution

In order to execute the simulations, type the following command in a terminal:

> ./make.sh [gui] run -O [targets...]

You can omit the gui argument if you don't need the graphical user interface; or omit the -O argument for a debug build (instead of an optimised build). On newer Mac M1 computers, the -O argument may induce compilation errors: in that case, use the -O3 argument instead. The possible targets are:

• all (for running all targets)
• batch (produces plots) runs a batch of experiments of process management
• graphic (with GUI, produces plots) runs a graphic process management experiment based on the provided parameters

Running the above command, you should see output about building the executables and running them, graphical simulations should pop up (if there are any in the targets), PDF plots should be produced in the plot/ directory (if any are produced by the targets), and the textual output will be saved in the output/ directory.

Graphical User Interface

Executing a graphical simulation will open a window displaying the simulation scenario, initially still: you can start running the simulation by pressing P (current simulated time is displayed in the bottom-left corner). While the simulation is running, network statistics may be periodically printed in the console, and be possibly aggregated in form of an Asymptote plot at simulation end. You can interact with the simulation through the following keys:

• Esc to end the simulation
• P to stop/resume
• O/I to speed-up/slow-down simulated time
• L to show/hide connection links between nodes
• G to show/hide the grid on the reference plane and node pins
• M enables/disables the marker for selecting nodes
• left-click on a selected node to open a window with node details
• C resets the camera to the starting position
• Q,W,E,A,S,D to move the simulation area along orthogonal axes
• right-click+mouse drag to rotate the camera
• mouse scroll for zooming in and out
• left-shift added to the camera commands above for precision control
• any other key will show/hide a legenda displaying this list

Hovering on a node will also display its UID in the top-left corner.