Changes between Initial Version and Version 1 of JobPinning

Timestamp:

Aug 14, 2017, 1:17:44 PM (8 years ago)

Author:

davea

Comment:

--

JobPinning

@@ +1 @@
+= Pinning jobs to app version numbers =
+
+BOINC's default behavior is to process jobs with the latest app versions.
+
+During the lifetime of an app, there may be changes that are not backward compatible, e.g.:
+
+ * A new version uses a different input file format
+ * A new version produces output that won't validate against older versions.
+
+If the new version is introduced while there are still older jobs in the system,
+jobs will fail and/or not validate.
+
+One alternative is to stop adding jobs until there are no jobs in progress,
+then add the new app versions and resume creating jobs.
+This can cause lots of unused capacity.
+
+Another option is to create a new app.
+This can cause various problems, e.g. invalidating user configurations
+and app selection settings.
+
+== Job pinning ==
+
+A third option is to '''pin''' jobs to a particular app version number.
+For example,
+{{{
+create_work --app_version_num 405 ...
+}}}
+means that the job is to be processed only by app versions with version number 415 (i.e. 4.15).
+
+The default is 0, meaning that the job is processed using the latest version.
+
+In addition, you must tell BOINC what the earliest usable version for the app is,
+i.e. the lowest version number for jobs currently in progress.
+Do this by setting the "min_version" field in the app's DB entry.
+The easiest way to do this is to change the project.xml, e.g.
+{{{
+    <app>
+        <name>uppercase</name>
+        <user_friendly_name>upperCASE</user_friendly_name>
+        <min_version>415</min_version>
+    </app>
+}}}
+and then run [XaddTool xadd].