Change Log
1.23 Thu Mar 24 2009

Bug fix

- This release fixes a nasty bug where Family files were not being parsed properly if the files were in DOS format (with CRLF endings, instead of just LF). Unfortunately, most web browsers save textarea text with CRLF, so a Family file that was originally in Unix format (LF) could wind up being in DOS (CRLF) format if you edited it via the website.

1.22 Mon Mar 23 2009

Feature Addition and minor bug fix

- Added the ability to release all dependencies from a job. This makes the job available to run immediately, regardless of how many jobs it is supposed to wait for, or what time dependency it has. Releasing a job effectively changes its status from 'Waiting' to 'Ready.' This option is only available to jobs that are currently in the 'Waiting' state.
- Fixed a minor bug where status on the website was sometimes showing a previous day's status if the website had been up for more than a day.
- Added a line break between the words in the headers in the status and log pages on the website, so that the table doesn't take up too much horizontal space.
- Eliminated a debug message saying that the ignore_regex option changed every time the system cycled.

1.21 Thu Mar 12 2009

Bug fix

- Fixed a bug that was causing the rerun and mark commands run with the --cascade or --dependents_only flag to print an error message when there was, in fact, no error, and possibly exit before rerunning or marking all requested jobs.

1.20 Tue Mar 10 2009

Minor bug fixes and documentation changes

- Fixed a bug where the end time wasn't being calculated properly.
- Added some licensing text to comply with yui licensing requirements.

1.19 Sat Mar 07 2009

Minor bug fixes and documentation changes

- In Log page, successful job should show 'mark Failure' not 'mark Success'.
- Added log_date to website to make Rerun/Mark of a job from a previous day work as expected.
- Changed RESTful service header and docs - added log_date.

1.18 Fri Mar 06 2009

All of the changes in this release are related to the website.

- Made sure that if a job file dies after the fork but before ceding control back to the wrapper, you can at least see its log, if it was run with run_with_log.
- The website now shows the log file for running jobs, not just jobs that have completed.
- Fixed bug where marking a job as Success was not working after it had been marked as Failure.
- Moved mark and rerun forms to buttons on the status and logs tables
- Changed website to a horizontal layout, so that we have the full window width for tables.
- Fixed a bug so that rerun jobs log files are displayed correctly on the web site.
- Added 'Cache-Control: Public' HTTP response header to allow Firefox 3 to cache SSL pages which it does not do by default. This greatly improves website performance if you're using Firefox 3. Firefox 2 does not support the Cache-Control response header, so the website will be slower if you're using SSL and Firefox 2 or earlier.
- Added the 'help' and 'about' documentation sections to the website.

1.17 Sat Feb 21 2009

The major change in this release is the addition of an alternative run wrapper script called run_with_log. It performs the same functions as the original wrapper, and also creates a log file that captures both STDOUT and STDERR of the job being run. On the website you can now display the log file of any running or completed job, by clicking on the displayed status of the job. The RESTful web service also supports this. A couple of entries have also been added to the HOWTO section of the documentation.

1.16 Wed Feb 18 2009

Minor bug fix. An incorrect test job file was shipped in the previous version. This file relied on /bin/bash, and not /bin/sh. This caused test 017 to fail on any machine that did not have /bin/bash. The file has been fixed in this release.

1.15 Sun Feb 15 2009

The ordering of jobs displayed by the status command was changed. The status command now accepts a --date option, to view jobs that ran on a previous date. When run for the current day, the status command now also displays all jobs that ran that are not currently in any Family. This handles the case where the jobs are removed from family files intra-day, after running. These jobs are displayed using the newly-supported default_time_zone option.

This release also introduces taskforestd, a perl-only web server that implements a RESTful web service that can be used by programatic clients to access the Taskforest system. The web server also includes a web site that can be used by humans to interact with Taskforest. The web server uses Basic Authentication to authenticate the user, so if you wish to use it outside an intranet, you should use taskforestdssl, the SSL version of the program.

1.14 Thu Jan 22 2009

A new config option (and command line argument) was added. The ignore_regex option instructs the system to ignore any Family files whose names match the regular expressions specified by this option. It's primarily used to ignore .bak and ~ files left by text editors. Also fixed a bug so that invalid file names are excluded.

1.13 Mon Jun 02 2008

The behavior of recurring jobs that are scheduled in a foreign time zone was not well defined. Now, the 'start' and 'until' of recurring jobs are always based on the most specific timezone of the job.

1.12 Sun Jun 01 2008

A border-condition bug dealing with foreign timezones crossing a date boundary was fixed.

1.11 Wed May 28 2008

Minor errors in the documentation and logging were fixed. A test case that was returing false negatives was made more robust.

1.10 Mon May 26 2008

Syntax error checking was added to the Family file parser. Optional logging of STDOUT and STDERR is now possible. The mark and rerun commands can now act on just the job specified, or on all its dependents or on both - the job and its dependents. Finally, a config file can now be used in lieu of command-line options or environment variables.

New options are:

- --log
- --config_file
- --chained
- --log_threshold
- --log_file
- --err_file

A sample config file can be found in the main directory as well as in the pod for TaskForest.

Please see the TaskForest pod for more details: perldoc TaskForest OR man TaskForest

Because of these changes, there are two new dependencies:

Log::Log4perl version 1.16 or higher
Config::General version 2.38 or higher
1.09 Sun Apr 27 2008

Two new scripts were added: 'rerun' schedules A job to be rerun, and 'mark' marks a previously job as Success or Failure. A new 'chained' option was added to the definition of repeat jobs, and a '--collapsed' option was added to the status script.

- The 'rerun' script makes a job available to be rerun, regardless of whether or not it ran successfuly. It does this by renaming the job's log files from FF.JJ.* to FF.JJ--Orig_n--.* where n is an integer that starts at 1 for the first rerun, and is incremented by one at every rerun.
- The 'mark' job marks a job as 'Success' or 'Failure', regardless of whether or not it ran successfully. It does this by renaming the job rc file from FF.JJ.x to FF.JJ.0 (in the case of Success) or FF.JJ.1 (in the case of Failure). If the job's status is already as requested, a warning is printed, and nothing is done.
- By default, repeat jobs (those that have the 'every' and 'until' options) have only one dependency - their time dependency. They are not dependent on each other. In retrospect, the correct behavior should have been to make the jobs also dependent on each other. Consider the case where a job is to run every hour, but for whatever reason, taskforest does not run until half-way through the day. This would cause half of the jobs to run at the same time at the first opportunity. The new 'chained' option makes the repeat jobs dependent on each other.
- Also related to repeat jobs: the new --collapsed option to the status command prevents repeat jobs that are in the 'Waiting' state from being displayed. This is especially useful when you have a job scheduled to be run once every minute, and it's only 8:00 a.m. You probably wouldn't want to see 960 entries when one would suffice.

1.08 Mon Apr 07 20:52:00 2008

A couple of the files required for the most recent test case was missing from the distribution. Added those files to the distribution. No code changes are present in this distribution.

1.07 Sun Apr 06 20:50:00 2008

A major bug was fixed in this release. Long-running jobs (that ran for longer than the wait time, or longer than the time between two invocations of taskforest) were not recognized as such. This caused the jobs to be marked as 'Ready' and not 'Running', causing them to be run again. All users are urged to upgrade to this release and make sure to use the current version of the 'run' wrapper.

1.06 Fri Apr 04 22:00:00 2008

        - fixed a bunch of minor bugs
          - implement --help functionality
          - added $VERSIONS and pod to every .pm file
          - got rid of extra call to localtime
          - removed the default_timezone command line option
          - got rid of redundant regex match for parens in job name
          - removed unused variable $forest from Family::readFromFile
          - renamed $this_jobs_dependencies to $this_jobs_time_dependencies
        - enhancements
          - refactored Family::readFromFile into smaller functions
          - use croak instead of die
          - Added more detailed info into the pid file
          - Added more test cases
          - Made the Family->display() output prettier
          - Added the StringHandle and StringHandleTier class to
            make testing easier.

1.05 Fri Mar 28 22:00:00 2008

        - added more test cases
        - fixed all known bugs
           Family::readFromFile makes a Family no longer current
           Family::readFromFile now accepts both single and double quotes.
           getLogDir throws an exception if the mkdir fails
        - Added a DESIGN document

1.04 Sun Mar 23 20:56:00 2008

        - added a lot more documentation to the man page and the code
        - gave files svn:keyword properties for Date and Revision

1.03 Sat Mar 22 08:29:00 2008
- allow '-' within the job_dir, log_dir and family_dir
1.02 Sat Mar 22 07:22:00 2008
- fixed bug where options weren't being read from the command line properly
1.01 Sat Mar 22 01:05:00 2008
- added bin files to MANIFEST and fixed test
1.00 Thu Mar 20 20:39:24 2008
- original version; created by ExtUtils::ModuleMaker 0.51