User:Paddedto10

GSoC proposal : Adding support for the -exec option in the search command

Info

Name

Peter Pronai

Email

pronaip@protonmail.com

IRC

raingloom

Background

undergrad student of Computer Science @ ELTE in Hungary, hobbyist with an interest in programming languages, operating systems and developing helpful tools

Overview

BRL-CAD databases are like file system trees, so the tools around it evolved in a similar fashion to UNIX tools, including a search command that is somewhat analogous to find(1), one key difference is that it's missing the -exec option. Currently, MGED specific commands only take "data" options, things that are present in the database, or are literal values - like numbers or text - and as such, they are accessible to libged without - the editor library. However, for -exec to work in MGED search would have to run arbitrary Tcl commands, but the search logic lives in librt, which has no access to the Tcl interpreter. The original plan was a C-side table mapping command names to functions, but because the Tcl namespace is dynamic, the only way to translate a name to a command is by asking Tcl.

Proposed solution

The solution we settled on is adding an "exec_handler" callback to db_search, which will take the usual argv/argc pair, but also take a void* that will also be provided in the call to db_search. This will get called on each node and return a boolean value, it will receive the parameters passed to it in the '-exec' query with the '{}' ones replaced by the current path.

(The '{}' syntax is not final, but since it is easy to change, it does not need to be.)

MGED can then provide a callback that simply runs its argv in the Tcl interpreter passed to it through the void pointer.

Detailed solution

I plan to use TDD throughout the project and I will document added/changed functionality in Doxygen as I go. Here is my roadmap with rough and pessimistic time estimates:

Milestone 0

1. Add callback type definition in the relevant header, add callback and userdata parameters to db_search.
2. Add necessary fields to the search plan struct.
3. Add evaluation logic for exec in plans.
   • This is the first big one, I'll have to study how search evaluation works more in-depth, but it shouldn't take longer than a week.

Milestone 1

1. Write the parser for the -exec option.
   • It shouldn't be too hard, just your run-of-the-mill custom argparse.
2. Integrate it with the planner logic.
   • Definitely harder, the planner looks quite weird at first, so I'll have to make sure I understand it completely before I go in and start grafting things onto it; still, it's shouldn't be super difficult, should be done in a week, maybe two.
3. Modify rest of evaluation logic to more closely correspond to find(1) (such as not implicitly printing when -exec is present).
   • By this point I will have acquainted myself with the planner and evaluation logic enough that this one shouldn't be hard.

Milestone 2

1. Write the exec_callback that will call Tcl functions on MGED's side.
   • Biggest difficulty here is understanding how Tcl works on the C side, how to push results, call functions, pass parameters, that kind of thing, so this could take a while, 2 weeks maybe.
2. Hook up the two sides.
   • should be easy by this time, I estimate 1-3 days.

Milestone 3 (extra?)

1. Add support for '+' form.
   • I left this for last, so the ';' form can be released to end users sooner and because its necessity is not yet clear. The biggest difficulty here is aggregating multiple paths into a single call and deciding where that call should take place. I suspect this one to take 2 weeks.

According to the GSoC timeline, we will have at least ~10 weeks for our projects, that leaves ~2.5 weeks per milestone, or 3.3 weeks if we don't count the "extra" milestone. That should be plenty enough time to finish the project, including tests and documentation.

Availability

I can work ~6 days a week throughout most of the summer, except for a 4-5 day family vacation in July (not yet decided when), but even then I will have internet access and my laptop with me, so I will still be able to do a few hours of coding each day. I can work on the project 6-8 hours a day. I will be available through Zulip/Tox/Email/IRC (and possibly other platforms, if needed).

Why BRL-CAD

I've been an open-source user for a long time and I heard from multiple people that there weren't really good CAD programs for Linux, especially not free ones. (As I'm not a CAD user, I can't verify the objectivity of their claims.) I want to change that, because I think open hardware and open workflows are important. I also plan to learn more about hardware design and this looked like a nice opportunity to get to know a CAD program a bit better. I chose BRL-CAD specifically because it was the only CAD toolkit I could find that was built in the UNIX philosophy, which I consider a good software design philosophy. I'm also a Plan 9 fan, albeit a noob one, and I'm interested in practical software design and this was an obvious avenue to learn more about how large C projects are structured and if they could be structured differently.

Why Me

I can program in a variety of languages (Lua, C, C++, shell scripts, Python, Rust, JS, plus some limited experience in Idris, Agda, Haskell, C#, etc...) and have experience writing my own tools. I am curious about programming and computing and I do a lot of reading. I try to learn from everyone and write code that helps people. I am critical of my own code and I try to think of simpler and cleaner ways to do things, but I don't let idealism hold me down. I know how to adapt to new tools or how to make them adapt to me. I can use a VCS.

Relevant things

BSD find, which the current search logic is based on: https://github.com/openbsd/src/tree/master/usr.bin/find

POSIX documentation of find(1) http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/find.html