#1721: Simfactory's test mechanism should use softlinks instead of rsync --------------------------+------------------------------------------------- Reporter: eschnett | Owner: Type: enhancement | Status: new Priority: minor | Milestone: Component: SimFactory | Version: development version Resolution: | Keywords: --------------------------+-------------------------------------------------

Comment (by hinder):

The main reason I added support for running the tests using simfactory was so that I could run them on Kraken, where the compute nodes didn't have access to the home filesystem, so the copying was essential. I am also a little nervous about the assumption that the source tree stays around. The tests may sit in the queue for a while, or you may change branch in the source directory. I agree it would be good to reduce the time taken to copy the data, but I seem to remember that a design goal of simfactory was to be correct, and avoid people making mistakes, at the potential expense of efficiency.

Maybe we could have a "cache" of the required files on the scratch filesystem, and use rsync's link-dest option, to make hard links to that cache. It wouldn't help the first time, but subsequent jobs would benefit.