Guide for developers

This document is intended to detail some of the inner workings of Ganga to both document what we have done as well as make it easier for new developers to get on-board quicker.

GangaObject

At the core of a lot of Ganga is GangaObject. This is a class which provides most of the core functionality of Ganga including persistency, typed attribute checking and simplified construction.

Note

There is currently some work being done to replace the existing implementation if GangaObject with a simpler version. The user-facing interface should not change at all but more modern Python features will be used to simplify the code. This will also affect how schemas are defined but not how they are presented or persisted.

Schema

The schema of a GangaObject defines the set of attributes belonging to that class along with their allowed types, access control, persistency etc. Each GangaObject must define a schema which consists of a schema version number and a dictionary of Items. Schema items must define their name and a default value and can optionally define a lot more such as a list of possible types and documentation string.

Proxy objects

In order to provide a nice interface to users, Ganga provides a Ganga Public Interface which fulfils two main purposes. Firstly it is a reduced set of objects so that the user is not bombarded with implementation details such as Node. Secondly, all GangaObjects available through the GPI are wrapped in a runtime-generated class called a proxy.

These proxy classes exist for a number of reasons but primarily they are there for access control. While a GangaObject can has as many functions and attributes as it likes, only those attributes in the schema and those methods which are explicitly exported will be available to users of the proxy class.

When working on internal Ganga code, you shuold never have to deal with any proxy objects at all. Proxies should be added to objects as they are passed to the GPI and should be removed as they are passed back.

Attributes on proxy objects

Proxy classes and the object that they are proxying have a set number of attributes which should be present.

If an object inherits from GangaObject the class can have the property _proxyClass set which will point to the relevant GPIProxyObject subclass. This is created on demand in the addProxy and GPIProxyObjectFactory methods. The proxy class (which is a subclass of GPIProxyObject and created using GPIProxyClassFactory()) will have the attribute _impl set to be the relevant GangaObject subclass.

When an instance of a proxy class is created, the _impl attribute of the instance will point to the instance of the GangaObject that is being proxied.

Repository

A repository is the physical storage of data on disk (usually persisted GangaObjects) as well as library interface to it.

Registry

A registry is an in-memory data-store which is backed by a repository.

Job monitoring

IGangaFile

All file types as of Ganga 6.1 inherit from IGangaFile. This main exception to this is the File object which as of 05/05/2016 is used as it still has more features than the IGangaFile inheirted classes do.

Script Generator When is it used?
getWNScriptDownloadCommand This generates a script which will make the file accessible from the WN when the job starts running
getWNInjectedScript This generates a script which will send the file to the remote directory from the WN with no client intervention
Special attr Use/Doc Return type
lfn Unique to the DiracFile. This is the LFN of the file in the DFC str
getReplicas Unique to DiracFile returns a list of SE where the file is replicated list of str
‘_list_get__match__()’ IGangaFile, performs a type match on file objects. can we remove this? bool