Executing Kepler from the Command Line
How to execute Kepler from the command line (with or without the GUI ("headless"))
Kepler development tree instructions
The instructions below apply only to Kepler built from the Subversion development tree, not to Kepler-1.0.0.
To run a model,"ant run" and "ant run-only" now can open up a specified workflow on startup. For example:
cd build-area ant run -Dworkflow=../outreach/workflows/demos/getting-started/01-SimpleAddition.xml
will open up Kepler with the 01-SimpleAddition workflow loaded. For details, see the Build System Instructions page
Kepler 2.x command line instructions
On Linux and Mac, the command line executable is kepler.sh.
On Windows, kepler.exe only starts the Kepler UI; use kepler.bat (or kepler-console.bat for Kepler 1.0) to run a workflow from the command line.
To start Kepler from the command line (optionally loading a workflow), use the following command (examples use the Mac/Linux executable):
kepler.sh [workflow.xml | workflow.kar]
To run a workflow from the command line--with or without the Graphical User Interface (GUI)--use the following command for workflow KARs:
kepler.sh -runkar [-nogui | -redirectgui dir] [-force] [-param1 value1 ...] workflow.kar
Use the following command for workflow XMLs:
kepler -runwf [-nogui | -redirectgui dir] [-nocache] [-noilwc] [-param1 value1 ...] workflow.xml -nogui run without GUI support. -nocache run without kepler cache. -noilwc run without incrementing LSIDs when the workflow changes. -redirectgui dir redirect the contents of GUI actors to the specified directory
Running a workflow without the GUI is useful in environments with no graphic support, such a Web portal. Additionally, you can specify the values of workflow parameters:
kepler.sh -runwf -x 4 -y "foo" workflow.xml
The above command runs 'workflow.xml', setting the parameters x = 4 and y = "foo".
Creating Screenshots of Workflows
The "-screenshot" argument can be used to automate taking screenshots of workflows. The usage is:
kepler -screenshot [-type png | jpg | gif] [-force] [-o output [output2 [...]] | -odir directory] workflow.xml [workflow2.xml [...]] -force if true, always create the screenshot -o output [output2 [...]] the output filename -odir dir the output directory -type png|jpg|gif the image type
There are three possible ways to specify the output name and location of the screenshot images:
- If -odir is specified then the images are all written to this directory with the same name as the workflow.
- If -o is specified, then the outputs are written to the files specified by -o. There must be a file name for each workflow.
- If neither -odir or -o is specified, the outputs are written to the same directory as the workflow, with the same name as the workflow.