Drekar Launch

drekar-launch is a simple tool to launch and manage multiple processes. It is based on the process management code extracted from the pyri-core module, part of the PyRI Open-Source Teach Pendant

drekar-launch has a similar goal to roslaunch, but designed to be simpler and independent of ROS. It also has improvements in handling Windows process management using Windows Job Objects. Yaml files are used to configure the processes to launch.

drekar-launch will show a minimal GUI windows when the --gui is specified. This window shows same basic information, and has a "Stop All" button that will shut down all tasks. This GUI is useful if drekar-launch is started interactively by the user rather than running as a background service.

See also drekar-launch-process, a companion library that contains utility functions to use within processes hosted by drekar-launch. The functions wait_exit() and wait_exit_callback() assist in receiving shutdown signals in a reliable cross-platform manner.

See drekar-launch-process: https://github.com/johnwason/drekar-launch-process

Installation

python -m pip install --user drekar-launch

On Ubuntu, it may be necessary to replace python with python3.

Usage

Yaml files are used to configure the processes to launch. The following is an example of a drekar-launch.yaml file that launches two Python servers.

name: example_http_servers
tasks:
  - name: http_server_1
    program: python.exe
    args: example_http_server.py 8100 Server1
    cwd: .
  - name: http_server_2
    program: python.exe
    args:
      - example_http_server.py
      - 8101
      - Hello from Server2!
    start-delay: 1

The example_http_server.py program uses drekar-launch-process to wait for the shutdown signal.

In this example, the name field is the name of the launch group. The tasks section contains a list of tasks to launch. The following fields are used to configure the launch of each task:

• name: The name of the process
• program: The program to execute
• args: The command line arguments to pass to program
• cwd (optional): The working directory to run the program. Defaults to current directory.
• start-delay (optional): Delay the start of the program by specified seconds
• restart (optional): If true, process will be restarted if it exits
• restart-backoff (optional): Delay in seconds before restarting after exit
• quit-on-terminate (optional): If true, all processes will exit if the process exits
• tags (optional): Unused
• environment (optional): Key/value pairs to add to environment
• env-file (optional): File of environmental variable to override the environment

drekar-launch by default will load drekar-launch.yaml in the current directory. To run with default settings, simply call drekar-launch.

drekar-launch

In some cases, it may be necessary to use python to launch. The drekar-launch executable may not be installed to PATH.

python -m drekar_launch

drekar-launch accepts the following optional command line arguments:

• --config=: Specify an alternative configuration file
• --config-js=: Specify an alternative configuration file that uses Jinja2 templates
• --cwd=: Set the default working directory for processes
• --name=: Override the name of the launch group
• --quiet: Flag to suppress outputting to the terminal
• --gui: Show a simple GUI to stop the tasks

Drekar Launch saves the output to log files located in the following locations:

• Windows: %LOCALAPPDATA%\drekar-launch\drekar-launch\Logs
• Linux: $HOME/.cache/SuperApp/log
• Mac OS: $HOME//Library/Logs/drekar-launch

Logs should be periodically cleaned if too much disk space is used.

TODO: Add automatic log cleaning.

Jinja2 Templates can be used to generate configurations that fill in values at runtime or even include other templates. See the Jinja2 documentation (https://jinja.palletsprojects.com/) for more information on using templates.

Four variables are available in the template:

• configpath: Absolute path to the configuration file
• configdir: Directory containing the configuration file
• env: Environmental variables
• platform: Current platform of the system as returned by sys.platform. Typically win32, linux, or darwin (Mac OS)
• vars: Extra variables passed on the command line. Use --var-name=value, where name and value are replaced with specific values.

For example, if CONDA_PREFIX needs to be used:

name: example_http_servers
tasks:
  - name: http_server_1
    program: {{ env["CONDA_PREFIX"] }}/python.exe
    args: {{ configdir }}/example_http_server.py 8100 Server1
    cwd: {{ env["CONDA_PREFIX"] }}

License

Apache 2.0

Acknowledgment

Research was sponsored in part by the ARM (Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing) Institute through a grant from the Office of the Secretary of Defense and was accomplished under Agreement Number W911NF-17-3-0004. The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the Office of the Secretary of Defense or the U.S. Government. The U.S. Government is authorized to reproduce and distribute reprints for Government purposes notwithstanding any copyright notation herein.

This work was supported in part by the New York State Empire State Development Division of Science, Technology and Innovation (NYSTAR) under contract C160142.