Re: Grinder Feature Enhancements for Worker Notifications and Console Reporting

Hi David,

On 28/05/10 02:34, David Smith wrote:
>
> Good evening,
>
> Our organization is interested in using The Grinder for some 
> performance test measurements we will record.  There are a few 
> enhancements we would like to discuss and are willing to contribute 
> the code back to the community if there is interest in any of them.
>
> 1. *Ability to wait for a test to finish on all agent workers prior to 
> starting the next test.*  This would allow us to batch run a large 
> number of concurrent tests and help ensure that the same test is 
> actually running on all agents at any given time.  It seems like the 
> easiest way for us to do this is to run the console in headless mode 
> and enhance the Console API so that it allows listeners to be notified 
> when agents have started and finished processing a test.  We could 
> utilize this enhancement, along with the startWorkerProcesses() 
> method, to control when the next test starts on all agents.  I saw 
> that having a listener in the Console API was on the to-do list.
>

Yes, I've thought about doing something like this. I wouldn't base it on 
Test()'s though, but instead create a separate synchronisation API which 
the scripts would use. I don't think it would involve the console API, 
but would use the console for coordination.

I'd imagine an API that looks something like this:

     sync = grinder.synchronisation.register("my sync point") # create a 
sync handle

     ##

     sync.waitForAll()    # Blocks until all handles for "my sync point" 
have reached this point or have been closed

     ##

     sync.close()    # In case a script no longer wants to participate 
in a sync point. Will also happen automatically if the worker 
disconnects from the console.



> 2. *An option to publish detailed test results to the console.*  In 
> many cases the individual test results would contain too much data to 
> maintain in the console, making the summarized results the better 
> information to present.  However in our testing it would be more 
> useful to have all of the data collected from all the agents into a 
> single location by the console.
>

There may be a data volume issue here. Not sure.

> 3. *Collect statistics in a headless console.*  If our solution needs 
> to involve running the console in headless mode and sending all the 
> data collected to it, we will need to enhance the Console so that it 
> is able to record the data somehow.  I also saw that this is a To-do 
> list item.
>
> 4. *Push files from the console to the agents when running in headless 
> mode.*  We foresee ourselves having many agents deployed, so manually 
> transferring script changes to all of these files will be problematic 
> for us.
>

Yes, definitely both "to do"s

> Let me know if any of these enhancements are already underway by 
> someone else.  We would like our efforts to benefit the project as a 
> whole as well as our own needs, so feel free to discuss any additional 
> requirements or ideas regarding these enhancements with us and the list.
>

I won't be working on any of these in the near future, and I'd welcome 
such contributions. Please go ahead and prototype

Be aware that I'm a benevolent dictator and can be fussy about accepting 
patches, and will want to review things carefully before merging them 
back into the source tree, there's some hints at 
http://grinder.sourceforge.net/development/contributing.html. Start with 
some small things, and we'll proceed from there.

- Phil


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