Synopsis

Version 1:

distrst {assignment} [[ p | f | t ] | c ] {suite} {'studentglob'} {run_id} [logdir]

Version 2:

distrst [options] {assignment} {suite} {run_id}

Usage

Most of the parameters are as in rst.

The logdir parameter is a directory which log files can be written to, which track the progress of rst runs on each server. If no directory is specified, logging will not be performed. If version 2 is being used, this can be specified with the -o option.

Description

The program distrst is a wrapper that distributes rst runs across the servers named in the test_servers list in .rstrc, automatically balancing load and notably speeding up the time it takes to do testing runs. While rst is often more convenient when testing a suite on one or two students, distrst is preferable for doing a test run on a large number of students.

Because interleaved output to the terminal from all of the servers would be useless, distrst only prints basic diagnostic information about the servers it's connecting to and which students are being run on each. To allow for more information, an extra parameter for a logging directory is provided. If it is used, the output from rst runs will be put in server-specific log files within that directory; these files are named {assignment}{type}.{suite}.{runid}.{testrunnername}