Go-Smart Simulation Model Families

Families represent groups of workflows that are simulated in approximately the same way, or at least by using the same tools. This is slightly more specific than a workflow as, for example, the Docker workflow has a separate family for each Docker image. It corresponds more accurately to a single configuration system. This comprises a pair: a subclass of gssa.family.Family that contains instructions for interpreting GSSA-XML for this type of simulation and writing any necessary tool-specific configuration files, and the simulation tools themselves.

Two examples are GSSF, which is also a fully fledged workflow, and FEniCS, which depends on pre-meshing by the GSSF CGAL mesher component.

To find families, the gssa.family module scans for files in the directory of the gssa.families module.

TODO: extend this to user-configurable locations.

Note: family modules are run as part of the Python server - this means they are privileged and should only be included from highly trusted sources, as with other codes running as www-data. They are not sandboxed or intended to be user-supplied, but constitute a basic plug-in framework. The longer-term intention is to migrate to a proper plug-in framework, where community developed families may be added in, running as an unprivileged user. Of course, this would still require a higher level of trust than given to external user code, which only runs sandboxed in Docker.