CCTools 3.4.0 Released


We are pleased to announce the release of version 3.4.0 of the Cooperative Computing Tools, including Parrot, Chirp, Makeflow, Work Queue, SAND, All-Pairs, and other software.

The software may be downloaded here: http://www.cse.nd.edu/~ccl/software/download

New features and improvements:


  • New comprehensive documentation and man pages for all commands.
  • New support for python and perl bindings to the Work Queue system.
  • New support for running work queue applications directly on EC2.
  • New example application of replica exchange using Work Queue.
  • Parrot-XRootD support is now statically compiled in the binary release.
  • Improved scalability of ticket-based authentication in the Chirp server.
  • Improved support for HDFS as storage driver in the Chirp server.
  • Improved Chirp server architecture uses multiple processes for robustness.
  • Improved build system now handles portability across multiple operating systems (linux, solaris, macos, freebsd, cygwin) and architectures (x86, x86_64, ia64, ppc)
  • Bug fixes:


  • Fixed bug in Chirp chdir() that was seen as a No such directory error when using FUSE.
  • Fixed bug in Chirp tickets triggered by variable output from openssl.
  • Fixed bug in Parrot relating to poll(), which would result in long timeouts when using python or mpich.
  • Fixed bug in Parrot relating to tc{get/set}pgrp(), which would result in no prompt displayed in interactive root.
  • Fixed bug in the catalog server that would result in a crash when under heavy load.
  • Many members of the CCL team contributed to this release:


  • Michael Albrecht contributed the MPI Work Queue implementation, and generic support for batch systems with a qsub-like interface.
  • Peter Bui contributed the SWIG Perl and Python Work Queue bindings, the Starch tool, found many bugs throughout the code, and generally wrangled the build system.
  • Patrick Donnelly contributed the ticket authentication system and the Chirp-HDFS support.
  • Dinesh Pandiar contributed replica_exchange_protomol, ec2_{submit/remove}_workers, and multiple improvements to Work Queue.
  • Li Yu contributed to the Work Queue implementation.
  • The entire CCL team worked to complete the documentation.
  • And we also thank:


  • Nabil Ghodbane for assisting with parrot_run and ROOT.
  • Vanessa Hamar for assisting with parrot_run and mpich.
  • Rodney Walker for assisting with the chirp_server.
  • RJ Nowling and Badi Abdul-Wahid for assisting with the Work Queue system.
  • Andrew Thrasher for assisting with the perl bindings to Work Queue.



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