Concepts

• Application:

  Applications are simple Girder Folder. They represent top-level folders which contain all the different releases, application and extensions packages of your application. By default when you create a new application, it will automatically be created within the default Girder collection ‘Applications’ (see Girder concept to learn more about Girder collections and Folder).

  Applications contain metadata that organize the application and extension packages following a same name:

  • applicationPackageNameTemplate (set as {baseName}_{os}_{arch}_{revision} by default).

  • extensionPackageNameTemplate (set as {app_revision}_{baseName}_{arch}_{os}_{revision} by default).

  These template names correspond to the given name of all the uploaded application or extensions packages. Which means that all the packages (application or extension) will have a name that follow these templates depending on their given metadata during the upload.

  These templates can be changed at anytime using the Girder UI on the application view.

• Release:

  Release are also simple Girder Folder. They are part of an application and correspond to a specific revision of this application. They meant to contain application or extension packages which correspond to this specific application revision. It’s why each release has the application revision as metadata.

• Draft:

  Draft is a simple Girder Folder which contain a flat list of Release named as the corresponding application revision by default. When a new application is created, the draft folder is also created. This draft folder is used as default release when the upload of an application or an extension package occurs and which its own application revision doesn’t correspond to any release of the application (by checking the correspondence between the revision metadata stored on the release and the app_revision stored on the packages).

  However the draft folder does not contain any metadata. Only the release that’s contained into it got a revision metadata (corresponding to the application revision they are made for).

• Package:

  Package (application package) are Girder Item which contains only one binary file (the real application package). They are part of an application, and can only be found in a release folder. They are named following the applicationPackageNameTemplate set on the application they are made for.

  Each application package contain a bunch of metadata that give us information on which environment the package is made for like : Operating System: os, architecture: arch, application revision: revision, repository url… (see the list of parameters of Package on the server API to have an exhausted list of all the metadata).

  When uploading an application package, some of these metadata are required, the revision metadata is used to determine in which release to upload the application package. The release which have the same revision metadata will see the application package uploaded into it. If any release within the application has a matching revision, the application package will be uploaded into the corresponding draft release (by default). By searching for an existing draft release (with the matching revision) or if it doesn’t already exist, by creating a new one.

  The package file (binary file) during the upload will be kept as it within Girder. So when the extension will be downloaded, the downloaded file will keep the same extension (.bin, .zip, …). For instance, if the uploaded package is named ‘pkg.tar.gz’, then each time this application package will be downloaded, the downloaded file will keep the same ‘.tar.gz’ extension.

• Extension:

  As an application package, an Extension package is also a Girder Item, and has the same behavior than an application package. It contain a single binary file. The name of all uploaded extension follow the extensionPackageNameTemplate metadata stored in the Application.

  See the list of parameters of Extension on the server API to have an exhausted list of all the metadata.