Plugin Life-Cycle
Plugin Life-Cycle
A plugin is always created from a PluginProvider
. The PluginProvider
may
specify a JSON schema for the config options it accepts, and when instantiated
it will be passed configuration options and various runtime environment
resources such as log, garbage collector, and life-cycle tracker.
A plugin is usually only instantiated once during a worker process. For testing purposes it is, however, encouraged for plugins to be reentrant, though this requirement can be avoided when writing testings.
The methods on a plugin are called as part of the task-processing loop, this allows to the plugin to call affect the task processing as well as the worker life-cycle.
The general flow of how the Plugin
abstractions are called when a task is
processed is outlined in the diagram below:
Implementing Task features
As outlined in the diagram above Plugin.NewTaskPlugin()
is called, whenever
processing on a new tasks begins. This allows plugins to easily track context
related to a specific tasks and hook into all the events related to that task.
When TaskPlugin.BuildSandbox(SandboxBuilder)
is called the plugin may operate
on the given SandboxBuilder
this includes setting environment variables,
attaching proxies, caches etc. Obviously, the plugin has no business calling
SandboxBuilder.Discard()
or SandboxBuilder.StartSandbox()
.
Similarly, in TaskPlugin.Started(Sandbox)
the plugin is invited to interact
with the Sandbox
creating shells and displays, but clearly the plugin
should not call Sandbox.WaitForResult()
or Sandbox.Abort()
. Granted, calling
Sandbox.Kill()
is a reasonable thing to do, for a plugin implements logic
limiting the task execution time.
Controlling Worker Life-Cycle
When a plugin is created it is passed a life-cycle tracker as part of the
runtime.Environment
object. This allows the plugin to stop the worker either
immediately or gracefully. Hence, plugins can limit the worker life-cycle.
To facilitate useful life-cycle logic in plugins each plugin is called when the
worker is idle. The Plugin.ReportIdle(duration)
method is given the duration
of time that the worker has been idle. A plugin can use this initiate a
graceful shutdown only if the machine is idle near the end of a billing cycle.
Additionally, each plugin is also called when a non-fatal internal error occurs. Most plugins will just ignore this event, and normally the worker would be configured with at-most one plugin that implements a shutdown heuristic based on non-fatal internal errors. But this serves to move the decision about what to do when there is a non-fatal internal error into plugins.
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