Re: Instantiating multiple ModelSwarms

[Paul E Johnson]

OK, I can't be modest anymore.  I hate to see you reinventing the
wheel,  my code has been here all along:
http://lark.cc.ukans.edu/~pauljohn/Swarm/MySwarmCode/RepeatingHeatbugsParameters-1.4.1-4.tar.gz

That is from last year, and to compile you need make
EXTRAOBJCFLAGS=-Wno-error because there are unused variables.  But I've
just tested it just now, it runs.

It does what Fred wants. It starts a control panel, click start or next,
it pops up an experiment, the second control panel can start and stop
the simulation, and when it runs to completion, you can click next to
make another experiment/control panel start up.  

Here's the problem. If you don't let each individual experiment run to
completion, and instead you hit quit inside the experiment control
panel, the whole thing crashes.  

$ ./heatbugs
*** event raised for error: InvalidOperation
*** function: _update_mergeSchedules(), file:
/home/pauljohn/LinuxDownloads/redhat/BUILD/swarm-2.1.75.20010613/src/activity/Schedule.m,
line: 276
> MergeSchedule is invalid. There is no
> mergeAction for schedule where action
> should be inserted!
*** execution terminating due to error
/home/pauljohn/LinuxDownloads/redhat/BUILD/swarm-2.1.75.20010613/src/defobj/Symbol.m:173
-[Error(c) _raiseEvent:]
Aborted (core dumped)

I THINK there was a brief period of time when it did not crash with
swarm in the 1.4x era, but I can't promise anything, because, at one
point, I asked Marcus about it, and he said "yes, that crashes."  He
looked at the code once or twice and said, "yep, that doesn't work." 
And I've not looked at it since.

I spent quite a long time on that. I thought it should become the
prototype of all gui models, because it works like a "reset" button and
you don't have to restart a simulation.  I was thinking it was a good
use of effort and a potential prototype for repeated simulations, but
then Marcus and I talked for a long time and his advice then was the
same as now: it is generally easier and more foolproof to replicate
experiments by running over and over with command line parameters and
this experiment swarm-type-thing is needed only if one run learns from
the calculations of the previous one and you don't want to accomplish
the same learning by serilization.  

I was doing that because I could not figure how to make Drone work, but
then I figured that out with the help of our good friends in Michigan,
and now I have written replicator.pl, a lightweight perl approach to do
the same thing.

"Marcus G. Daniels" wrote:
> 
> >>>>> "FW" == Fred Wan <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> FW> The problem is that I _do_ want two control panels. One to start a
> FW> ModelSwarm and another to stop the ModelSwarm while it is
> FW> running.
> 
> I actually don't know what Paul is talking about.  If you run into a
> specific bug where you can say "this is definitely wrong", then I'll
> fix it.  Or, if you have a specific behavior that confuses you then I'll
> try to give you an answer.
> 
> Incidentally, an updateDisplay method is now in SwarmEnvironment.
> 
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-- 
Paul E. Johnson                       email: address@hidden
Dept. of Political Science            http://lark.cc.ukans.edu/~pauljohn
University of Kansas                  Office: (785) 864-9086
Lawrence, Kansas 66045                FAX: (785) 864-5700

                  ==================================
   Swarm-Support is for discussion of the technical details of the day
   to day usage of Swarm.  For list administration needs (esp.
   [un]subscribing), please send a message to <address@hidden>
   with "help" in the body of the message.