gourd

gourd is a command-line tool that schedules parallel runs for algorithm comparisons.

Given the parameters of the experiment, a number of test datasets, and algorithm implementations to compare, gourd runs the experiment in parallel and provides many options for processing its results.

While originally envisioned for the DelftBlue supercomputer at Delft University of Technology, gourd can replicate the experiment on any cluster computer with the Slurm scheduler, on any UNIX-like system, and on Microsoft Windows.

Installation

gourd is currently provided as a installer for various systems.

The easiest way to install gourd is to run the shell installer.

These binary releases can be found in the GitHub releases tab.

$ sudo sh install-[your system here].sh

This command, of course, requires a UNIX system.

For Windows simply use the two execuables provided.

The distributed installers are: (One of these should be put in place of [your system here])

• install-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.sh - Linux systems based on gnu eg: Ubuntu, Windows WSL.
• install-aarch-apple-darwin.sh - Apple ARM.
• install-delftblue.sh - Specifically made for DelftBlue, run it without sudo.
• Windows exe files: gourd.exe and gourd_wrapper.exe.

Customizing installation folders is explained here.

Usage

Verify that gourd is installed by running:

$ gourd version

Congratulations! Now you can use gourd.

There are extensive tutorials and documentation which can be accessed in many different formats.

With a web browser:

• gourd.1 in your browser!, supports both dark and light mode!
• gourd.toml.5 in your browser!, supports both dark and light mode!
• gourd-tutorial.7 in your browser!, supports both dark and light mode!

As a manpage, with the man command:

$ man gourd
$ man gourd.toml
$ man gourd-tutorial

As a PDF file:

• gourd.1 in your PDF reader!
• gourd.toml.5 in your PDF reader!
• gourd-tutorial.7 in your PDF reader!

Please refer to these if you want to familiarize yourself with the software.

A good first step (as outlined in the tutorial) is to try:

$ gourd init [directory name]

Uninstalling

Same as for the installer, the available uninstallers are:

• uninstall-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.sh
• uninstall-aarch64-apple-darwin.sh
• uninstall-delftblue.sh

Other systems

If your system is not listed above and you are interested in maintaining a script for it, please open a issue!

Building

Please refer to the building section of the maintainer documentation. An artifact is available from the GitLab pipeline documentation job, or here

Authors

• Mikołaj Gazeel, m.j.gazeel@student.tudelft.nl
• Lukáš Chládek, l@chla.cz
• Ανδρέας Τσατσάνης, a.tsatsanis@student.tudelft.nl
• Rūta Giedrytė, r.giedryte@student.tudelft.nl
• Jan Piotrowski, me@jan.wf