Module launchapi

Provide an API that allows a definition of a job.

A job is composed of two pieces:

  1) A task specification that defines a generic command-line invocation
     and defines what input files are needed and what output files are
     produced.
  2) Runtime parameters that include specific input and output filenames.

To launch a job, you must also provide a set of launch parameters, which
specify things like the job host, number of threads per process, etc.

There are two main ways to construct a JobSpecification from python.

The first way is to use the JobSpecificationBuilder. This requires the
creation of a TaskSpecification via the TaskSpecificationBuilder. In this
case, the command-line provided to the TaskSpecificationBuilder is in a
sense "abstract". It is a list of strings with variables in the form <KEY>
that can be plugged in with specific files at a later time by the
JobSpecificationArgsBuilder.

The second way is to use the JobSpecificationArgsBuilder. This allows the
creation of a JobSpecification from a "concrete" list of command-line
arguments. You must indicate the specific input and output files in the
command-line arguments so they can be transferred and retrieved.

The JobSpecificationBuilder is more work, but is preferred because it gives
more flexibility in JobSpecification use. For example, a function can be
created that allows a JobSpecification to be created from a list of
filenames. This gives the caller the advantage that they don't need
to construct the command-line arguments themselves. Use of a function like
this facilitates easy plugin to AppFramework2 guis.