[ptp-dev] high impact commit

[Greg Watson <g.watson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This is a heads up that I'm going to commit a high impact change to  
HEAD in the next few days. This will definitely break RM's that are  
not committed to CVS (i.e. anything apart from ORTE, LSF and MPICH2).  
This change hooks up the new org.eclipse.ptp.remote plugin to the RM  
implementations. I've provided a default remote services provider  
that implements purely local services, so you should still get the  
same behavior that is currently available (i.e. the ability to launch  
the proxy on a local machine). I'll also commit changes to the  
org.eclipse.ptp.remote.rse plugin that will allow you to play with  
remote services using RSE (I'm using the head of their CVS, but it  
should work with the latest Europa version - I just haven't tried it.)

You will also need to remove and re-add any resource managers you are  
currently using (for testing or whatever), since the configuration  
and preferences have changed with the new system.

I've provided abstract base classes for (hopefully) everything that  
you need to implement a remote RM, so unless you're doing something  
particularly weird with preferences or wizard pages, this change  
should result in you removing code rather than adding new code. Take  
a look at the org.eclipse.ptp.orte.core and org.eclipse.ptp.orte.ui  
plugins (after I've committed) to see what the new arrangement looks  
like.

Here is a summary of the new remote features that are currently  
implemented. I consider these interfaces and UI elements preliminary  
at this stage. If you have suggestions on how to make it better or  
more intuitive, please let me know. Also, there are likely to be  
bugs, so please be patient and I'll make sure they are fixed asap. If  
anyone want's to volunteer to help out implementing other features  
(e.g. IFileStore), please let me know. The more people helping out,  
the faster it will go.

1. The startupProxyServer() and shutdownProxyServer() methods in  
org.eclipse.ptp.rtsystem.proxy.AbstractProxyRuntimeClient have now  
become abstract, and are implemented by  
org.eclipse.ptp.remote.AbstractRemoteProxyRuntimeClient. RM's can  
just use this base class to proved complete remote functionality.

2. Abstract base classes for resource manager configuration,  
preferences and wizard pages have been provided.

3. There are three main sets of interfaces for remote support:  
IRemoteConnectionManager, IRemoteProcessBuilder, and  
IRemoteFileManager. The connection manager is used to manage remote  
connection information, such as hostnames, usernames and passwords.  
The process builder is similar to the ProcessBuilder class, and is  
used to execute a process on a remote machine. The file manager  
services are intended to provide remote file browsing, remote copy, etc.

4. There are (will be) LOCAL implementations of all the above  
services. This means that there will always be the option to run an  
RM proxy locally, even if none of the remote providers offer this.

5. There is an implementation for RSE in a separate plugin  
(org.eclipse.ptp.remote.rse) that provides remote process and remote  
file browsing functionality.

6. In the current design, it is possible to have multiple remote  
service providers installed simultaneously. For example, one RM could  
use remote services provided by RSE and another RM could use remote  
services provided by some other remote package.

Comments/suggestions welcome.

Greg