The Runtime Environment

The REDHAWK runtime environment provides a mechanism for managing the life cycle (creation/tear down/initialization) of components as well as the interconnection of deployed components.

The primary goal of the runtime environment is to support the necessary infrastructure to deploy and manage interconnected components as a running application.

The runtime environment is personified by two binaries, a Domain Manager program and a Device Manager program. The Domain Manager program hosts an instance of a DomainManager class as well as supporting objects (ApplicationFactory, Application, FileManager). The Device Manager program hosts an instance of a DeviceManager object and an instance of a File System. The only reason why the major classes making up these programs are imported is because their API is remotely available, so a user can arbitrarily interact with these objects. Irrespective of their API, these objects exclusively reside in either the Domain Manager or Device Manager programs.

A single REDHAWK system instance has one Domain Manager and an arbitrary number of Device Managers. The Domain Manager’s role is as a central bookkeeper as well as a single point where applications can be deployed or torn down. A Device Manager is present in each host in the REDHAWK network area; in a purely processing context, there would be a single Device Manager in each computer that is intended to host running components. Each Device Manager has associated with it a set of devices that act as proxies for whatever hardware is running on the computer; in a purely processing context, there is a single device proxy describing the microprocessor for each hardware platform Device Manager.

The Domain Manager program:

• receives an XML file describing a waveform that is to be deployed.
• scans all running devices on all Device Managers for a suitable place to deploy the components making up the waveform.
• uses the File Manager / File System to copy whatever files are necessary to run the components to the target Device Managers.
• remotely invokes the component processes.
• interconnects components over the network.
• tears down applications appropriately.

• Launching a Domain
• Domain Manager
• File System
• Applications
• The Application Factory
• The Device Manager
• The Allocation Manager
• The Connection Manager
• Events