Generalise assumed command-line format about sumatra

[apdavison]

A proposal for implementing this:

1. <main_file> (supplied by the --main option to smt run, for example) may be a space-separated list of scripts
2. smt run may have any number of arguments. These are treated as follows:
   a. test whether the arg is the path to a file. if so, try to interpret it as a parameter file. If this can't be done, it is taken to be a generic "input file", and stored in a new attribute of Record, inputs. We should perhaps store the md5sum of the file as well as its path, to catch the case that a different file is later created with the same name.
   b. any args that look like "param=val" are treated as at present, and added to the parameter file
   c. anything else is assumed to be an argument of the <main_file> script, passed on unchanged during launch, and added to Record.inputs.

I can think of two possibilities for storing inputs:

1. Put both input files (as datastore.DataFile objects) and script arguments in the same place: Record.inputs
2. Have separate attributes: Record.input_files and Record.script_arguments

I think option (1) is best, as it preserves the argument order. We can always provide the extra attributes in option (2) as properties giving views of Record.inputs.

We can probably generalize "check if it is a file" to "check if it exists in a DataStore" to support inputs that come from online databases, etc.

Trac comment by apdavison on 07-19-2010 at 16:47

[apdavison]

Multiple arguments for smt run has been done in [177:6d960b24419c], although I didn't go for the Record.inputs idea in the end since it involved a lot more hassle in the DjangoRecordStore backend to keep the ordering right. Instead we have Record.input_data and Record.script_arguments. The latter is just a string.

Multiple main files remains to do.

Trac comment by apdavison on 07-20-2010 at 19:20

[apdavison]

Support for multiple main files implemented in [210:2498dcbd8da1], although the implementation is rather simplistic and assumes no spaces in file names.

Trac comment by apdavison on 02-14-2011 at 15:30