| [ Home | What's New | Contents | Overview | Contributors | Distribution | Examples | Documentation | Manual | Publications | Mailing List Archive | Problems ] | This page was last updated by Axel Belinfante on 2004-10-25 | |
| TorX Test Tool Information | ||
| Prev | Next | |
Bmsc is a shell-level command that causes a running mscviewer to load the named MSC files, or to display its standard input. The connection between Bmsc and a running mscviewer will not be closed until all files (or the complete standard input) of the Bmsc command have been processed by mscviewer, in order to allow the running mscviewer to report possible error messages (e.g. about syntax errors) about the files that it processes via the standard error of the Bmsc command that sent the files to it. If Bmsc cannot find a running mscviewer, it will start a new one. To display the new MSC file(s), mscviewer will reuse windows that contain a complete MSC and have the Reuse toggle activated. If more windows are needed, they are created.
In general, it is probably best to only use the Bmsc command, and let it start mscviewer when necessary. However, one should be aware of the fact that when a Bmsc command is given when no mscviewer is currently running, the Bmsc will ``become'' a mscviewer command, which is ``long-running'' and will only exit when all its windows are closed or the Quit button is pressed (or a Bmsc -exit command is given). In contrast, a Bmsc command given when a mscviewer is already running will exit as soon as its files or standard input are processed by the running mscviewer.
The -r command line option of both mscviewer and Bmsc will activate the Reuse toggle button for the windows that will contain the MSC's given on the same command line or via standard input.
When Bmsc is started with only command line option -m mcastid, or when environment variable TORXMCASTID was set, the MSC viewer tries to connect to the address given in the mcastid and to use the resulting connection as a remote control connection to synchronise displaying a particular step in the MSC viewer. Whenever the user does something in the user interface that selects a different step in the MSC, its step number is written to the remote control connection. Whenever a step number can be read from the remote control connection, the corresponding step is displayed in the MSC viewer.
When Bmsc is started with only one command line parameter: -exit, the running mscviewer will clean up and exit.
The MSC file should be in event oriented textual representation. mscviewer indicates both ``normal'' end-of-msc and ``abnormal'' end-of-input without having seen end-of-msc. The ``normal'' end-of-msc is visualized by drawing horizontal bars at the end of every instance in the MSC. The ``abnormal'' end-of-input is visualized by drawing at the end of each instance of the MSC a stippled/dotted contininuation of the instance, and ending that with stippled/dotted horizontal bars.
The ``endinstance'' statements in the MSC are ignored; the ``endsmsc'' statement is used to close all instances.
Only a limited subset of the MSC language is implemented. Valid input is assumed; only very limited checking is done.
The syntax recognized for the MSC language is inferred from the tutorial mentioned above, but not checked with a more formal syntax description. In particular, mscviewer expects double quotes (") to be present for MSC items containing whitespace -- whether this is consistent with the MSC standard has not been checked.
When mscviewer is started, it checks if other instances of it are running. If so, they are killed. This was added to clean up run-away processes.
When mscviewer is given multiple files that are to be processed simultaneously, it has a tendency to process the files one after the other, in reverse order, instead of procesing them in parallel, step by step.
It is counter-intuitive that the Step up arrow button moves the highlight down (because the up button increments the step number, and the steps are numbered increasing from top to bottom).
| Prev | Table of Contents | Next |
| Appendix D: TorX Manual Pages: torx-intro(1) - introduction to the Cote de Resyste testing tool torx |
|
Appendix D: TorX Manual Pages: adaptlog(1) - torx program to use a torx logfile as implementation |