[Agentfactory-developer] Startup Changes

[Dave L. <dav...@uc...>]

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Hi folks,

At Rem's request, I've been making some changes to the way Agent Factory
starts up, along with a number of bugfixes. These are in CVS now. Below
is a changelog for the changes that I have made on these. Comments more
than welcome:

Changelog from Agent Factory 0.2.6 (draft)

In this changelog, AF_HOME denotes the directory into which Agent
Factory was installed and PROJECT_HOME is the base
directory where the current project is located.

* The following short switches are now supported. The equivalent long
switches in parentheses are still supported.
        -c (-config)
        -h (-help)
        -s (-script)
        -p (-port)
        -v (-version)

        Unlike in previous versions of Agent Factory, setting -script
	and -config is no longer mandatory. If these are not
        explicitly set, Agent Factory will default to using the
	``default.aps'' and ``default.cfg'' files in PROJECT_HOME.
        If these are explicitly set, they must be located in
	PROJECT_HOME.

* The following new switches are now supported.
        -d (-project-home)      - set PROJECT_HOME
        -o (-output)            - output filename to which STDOUT and
				STDERR will be redirected
        -f (-forward)           - forward output to the screen. This is
				no longer done by default.

        If PROJECT_HOME is not explicitly set, it will default to the
	present working directory, as in previous versions
        of Agent Factory.

        If the output filename is not set (and -f has not been called),
	Agent Factory will default to a file of the form
        ``YYYYMMDD-SCRIPT-CONFIG.log'', where ``YYYYMMDD'' is the
	current date, ``SCRIPT'' is the name of the current
        script  file (without the .aps extension) and ``CONFIG'' is the
	name of the current configuration file (without
        the .cfg extension). This default output file will be created in
	PROJECT_HOME.

        If -f and -o are both called, the output will both be written to
	the screen and printed to a file.
        If -f is called and -o is not, the only output will be to the
	screen.

* Any other switches that are specified are passed on to the ``java''
command
        This enables such things as setting the maximum heap size and
	attaching a profiler to your
        agent-based application.

        The only exception is the -cp option, which is ignored, as the
	Agent Factory bootstrap process generates
        the appropriate classpath itself. Thus, custom classpaths are
	not supported.

* The directories that Agent Factory will add to its classpath have
	varied slightly. They are:
        - AF_HOME/lib           - system-wide JAR files
        - PROJECT_HOME/plugins  - project-specific JAR files
        - PROJECT_HOME/work     - project-specific .class files added at
				runtime

        Note that AF_HOME/plugins is no longer supported.

        It is intended that, in future, plugins will be downloadable
	separately, rather than being part of the Agent Factory
	distribution.

* The shell scripts for *nix systems have been modified to allow them to
function correctly when symlinked.

* The users.dat file for RCS is now located in the PROJECT_HOME
directory, rather than AF_HOME. This allows different user of the same
machine allow a different set of users to connect to their agent programs.

* The sites.dat file for RCS is saved in ~/.agentfactory/sites.dat on
Linux systems, as the running program is unlikely to have write access
to AF_HOME. The behaviour for other platforms is, as yet, unchanged.

* A build.properties file has been added to the CVS repository. This
stores the current release number for the ant script to use.
  -Drelease-number=x.x.x can still be passed to the `ant' command, but
the build.properties file allows for a more sensible default.
  This is most important for whenever a tag for a release is made, as it
would include the build.properties file with the appropriate release
  number in it, without having to be manually specified.

* The "users.dat" file needed for remote access is now located in
PROJECT_HOME, as the user running agentfactory may not have
  write access to AF_HOME.

* This is not a change to Agent Factory per se, but a Debian package has
been created for easier installation on Debian-based Linux systems.

* A bug in afgui has been fixed to allow for more robust handling of
unexpected messages.

- --
David Lillis
D0.12 EUROKOM Building
School of Computer Science and Informatics
University College Dublin
e: dav...@uc...
t: +353 1 716 2933
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