Deploying your Application

There is several ways to deploy the application you want to study on your simulated platform, i.e. to specify which actor should be started on which host. You can do so directly in your program (as shown in these examples), or using an XML deployment file. Unless you have a good reason, you should keep your application apart from the deployment as it will ease your experimental campaign afterward.

Deploying actors from XML is easy: it only involves 3 tags: <actor>, <argument>, and <prop>. They must be placed in an encompassing <platform>. Here is a first example (search in the archive for files named ???_d.xml for more):

<?xml version='1.0'?>
<!DOCTYPE platform SYSTEM "https://simgrid.org/simgrid.dtd">
<platform version="4.1">
  <!-- The following starts an actor that runs the function `alice()` on the given host.
    -- It is not given any parameter, so its args is empty.
    -->
  <actor host="host1" function="alice" />

  <!-- The following starts another actor that runs `bob()` on host2.
    -- The args of this actor contains "3" and "3000" on creation.
    -->
  <actor host="host2" function="bob" />
    <argument value="3"/>
    <argument value="3000"/>
  </actor>

  <!-- Carole runs on 'host3', has 1 parameter "42" in its argv and one property.
    -- Use simgrid::s4u::Actor::get_property() to retrieve it.-->
  <actor host="host3" function="carol">
    <argument value="42"/>
    <prop id="SomeProp" value="SomeValue"/>
  </actor>
</platform>

---

<actor>

This tag starts a new actor executing the given function on a given host.

Parent tags: <platform> (only in deployment files)
Children tags: <argument>, <prop>
Attributes:

host

Host on which this actor should be started (mandatory).

function

Code to execute.

That function must be registered beforehand with simgrid::s4u::Engine::register_actor() or with simgrid::s4u::Engine::register_function().

If you are stuck with MSG, use MSG_process_create(), MSG_process_create_with_arguments() or MSG_process_create_with_environment().

There is nothing to do in Java, as SimGrid uses introspection abilities to retrieve the classes from their names. You must then use the full class name (including the package name) in your XML file.

start_time

Useful to delay the start of your actor.

-1 starts the actor immediately.

kill_time

Time at which the actor should be killed.

-1 means that the actor should not be killed automatically.

on_failure

What to do when the actor’s host is turned off and back on.

Either DIE (default – don’t restart the actor) or RESTART

---

<argument>

Add a parameter to the actor, to its args vector. Naturally, the semantic of these parameters completely depend on your program.

Parent tags: <actor>
Children tags: none
Attributes:

value

The string to add to the actor’s args vector.