Create a Project

FlowTracer keeps track of the files and jobs that make up the flow you want managed. The collection of such files and jobs constitutes a "project". Each project has one dependency graph that encodes the runtime trace of the jobs and files in the project. Each dependency graph of a runtime trace has one running server process that manages it.

You begin using FlowTracer by creating a project and starting its server. If a project was already created but not running, then starting its server would be all that was needed.

To create a project, you must choose at least:

  • a name for the project; any alphanumeric string can be used
  • a host to run the server

Optionally, you may also specify

  • a directory that will hold the "server working directory" (.swd) for the project. This .swd directory will contain the system control files used by FlowTracer. The default location that holds the FlowTracer server working directory is inside the vov directory in your home directory (~/vov) on UNIX, and in $VOVDIR/local/swd on Windows.

For this tutorial, we will use the default location for holding the .swd directory.

  1. To create and start a project, use vovproject create as shown here: 
    denby1 (no project) DEFAULT+P4+P4 ~/Perforce > cd ..
denby1 (no project) DEFAULT+P4+P4 ~ > vovproject create tutorial_denby
Creating a new project:
    Directory  /home/denby/vov
    Type       generic
    Product    auto
    Name       tutorial_denby
    Port       any
    Web port   0
    Guest port 0
vovproject 11/22/2019 05:45:21: message: Creating server directory "/home/denby/vov/tutorial_denby.swd/."
vovproject 11/22/2019 05:45:21: message: Created setup file '/home/denby/vov/tutorial_denby.swd/setup.tcl'
vovproject 11/22/2019 05:45:21: message: Copy all files from /remote/release/VOV/2019.01_71758_Apr25/linux64/etc/ProjectTypes/generic
vovproject 11/22/2019 05:45:21: message: Updating autostart/start_vovnginxd.tcl...
vovproject 11/22/2019 05:45:21: message: Warning: the path permissions for taskers are 040777 instead of 0777
vovproject 11/22/2019 05:45:21: message: Starting a VOV server
	for project tutorial_denby@denby1
	PORT=any,WEB_PORT=0,READONLY_PORT=0
    This command creates all necessary project control files in the server working directory and starts the server process for the project.
  2. You can use the list option of the vovproject command to see what projects are available and see their status. At this point, you will see that the tutorial project is running. 
    % vovproject list