April 2024 - This site, and Kamaelia are being updated. There is significant work needed, and PRs are welcome.
Project Task Page: Compose
Status: Stasis - Compose can create Graphline based
Kamaelia systems
Current Developers: Michael
Current "inflight" dev location:
/Code/Python/Kamaelia/Tools/Compose*
Start Date: August 2005
Expected End Date: n/a
End Date: na
Date this page last updated: 12 December 2006
Estimated effort so far: 20 days (est)
Description
Compose will be a tool capable of visually composing and editting any
Kamaelia system.
As Compose is created/improved, it will be capable of creating more and
more complex Kamaelia based systems visually. The outcome will be a tool
for generic systems, but especially networked & multimedia
applications.
The potential for a graphical tool has been recognised all along, and
care has been taken in the design of Axon to allow this to happen, and
to ensure that any running system structure is introspectable at
runtime. Indeed, first came the system, then introspection, then visual
creation. Any extensions to the system (eg for non-dataflow components)
are suggested to follow the same mould - text/introspectable first,
graphical second.
Benefits:
A graphical tool provides for rapid prototyping
There is the potential for a generic "spreadsheet of
applications"
There is the potential to build versions with a targeted interfaces
for different user types:
- Non-technical BBC users
- Technical BBC users
- Children
As a debugging tool, the ability to visually delve inside a running
system and fix things (much like opening the hood of a car) is an
extremely interesting prospect - especially if this can be done in a
sustainable, maintainable way.
This section is largely about WHO has influenced this task to do
WHAT, and where possible WHY. It is also about WHO to contact with
regard to this task to influence what's going on.
Task Sponsor: Michael Sparks
Task Owner: Michael Sparks
Developers involved in the task at some point
- Michael Sparks
- Matt Hammond
Users:
Interested third parties
Requirements
- To be added - this is largely exploratory work in nature.
Relevant Influencing factors:
Section started after the 0.5 release. For brevity, it has been
skipped for now.
Outputs
Expected
Expected outputs are likely to be iterative. This page is
non-exaustive.
- A tool for visualising Kamaelia systems
- A tool for introspecting running Kamaelia systems
- A tool for creating Kamaelia pipelines
- A tool for creating Kamaelia graphlines
- A tool for creating Kamaelia graphlines and setting up any necessary
initial configuration code
- A tool for turning such graphlines and config code into reusable
components themselves (eg for insertion into a shared repository)
- A tool for creating new, based components textually and inserting
them into a repository
- ...
Actual
- Axon Visualiser - in the Kamaelia 0.2 release
- Visual Pipe Builder - in the Kamaelia 0.4 release
- Compose 1.0 - graphline editor - in the Kamaelia 0.5 release
Realistic
possibilities arising as a result of activity on this task
Section started after the 0.5 release. For brevity, it has been
skipped for now.
Tasks that
directly enable this task (dependencies)
- Section started after the 0.5 release. For brevity, it has been
skipped for now.
Sub Tasks
- Section started after the 0.5 release. For brevity, it has been
skipped for now.
Task Log
This log was started after the 0.5 release. For brevity, it has
been skipped for now.
- Matt, August 2006 - Initial pipeline version created
- Michael, October 2006 - Pipeline version based on repository
introspection created.
- Michael, September 2006 - Graphline version created
- Michael, December 2006 - PTP created
Discussion
PTP created, -- Michael Sparks, 12 December 2006
