Getting started

Table of Contents

• Using the WRENCH initialization tool
• Example WRENCH simulators

Once you have installed the WRENCH library, following the instructions on the installation page, you are ready to create a WRENCH simulator. Information on what can be simulated and how to do it are provided in the WRENCH 101 and WRENCH 102 pages. This page is only about the logistics of setting up a simulator project.

Using the WRENCH initialization tool

The wrench-init tool is a project generator built with WRENCH, which creates a simple project structure as follows:

project-folder/
├── CMakeLists.txt
├── CMakeModules
│   └── FindSimGrid.cmake
│   └── FindWRENCH.cmake
├── src/
│   ├── Simulator.cpp
│   ├── Controller.cpp
├── include/
│   └── Controller.h 
├── build/
└── data/
    └── platform.xml

The Simulator.cpp source file contains the main() function of the simulator, which initializes a simulated platform and services running on this platform; Controller.h and Controller.cpp contain the implementation of an execution controller, which executes a workflow on the available services. The simulator takes as command-line argument a path to a platform description file in XML, which is available in data/platform.xml. These files provide the minimum necessary implementation for a WRENCH-enabled simulator.

The wrench-init tool only requires a single argument, the name of the folder where the project skeleton will be generated:

$ wrench-init <project_folder>

Additional options supported by the tool can be found by using the wrench-init --help command.

Of course, you do not have to use wrench-init, especially if you're used to creating your own CMake projects. But you still may want to look at the CMakeLists.txt file generated by wrench-init. In particular, note that CMakeLists.txt uses the FindSimgrid.cmake and FindWRENCH.cmake files, which are placed by wrench-init in the CMakeModules directory.

Example WRENCH simulators

The examples in the examples directory provide good starting points for developing your own simulators. Examples are provided for the generic "action" API as well as for the "workflow" API, and are built along with the WRENCH library and tools. See the examples/README.md file for a brief description of all examples. Examples can be built by typing make examples in the build directory.

For instance, the examples/action_api/basic-examples/bare-metal-bag-of-actions example can be executed as:

$ wrench-example-bare-metal-bag-of-actions 6 two_hosts.xml --log=custom_wms.threshold=info

(File two_hosts.xml is in the examples/action_api/basic-examples/bare-metal-bag-of-actions directory.) You should see some output in the terminal. The output in white is produced by the simulator's main function. The output in green is produced by the execution controller implemented with the WRENCH developer API.

Although you can inspect the codes of the examples on your own, we highly recommend that you go through the WRENCH 101 and WRENCH 102 pages first. These pages make direct references to the examples, a description of which is available in examples/README.md in the WRENCH distribution.