IMPORTANT: analysis outputs written in BDIR/analysis

Until now, the build directory contained a 'software/' directory (that
hosted all the built software), a 'tex/' subdirectory for the final
building of the paper, and many other directories containing
intermediate/final data of the specific project. But this mixing of built
software and data is against our modularity and minimal complexity
principles: built software and built data are separate things and keeping
them separate will enable many optimizations.

With this commit, the build directory of the core Maneage branch will only
contain two sub-directories: 'software/' and 'analysis/'. The 'software/'
directory has the same contents as before and is not touched in this
commit. However, the 'analysis/' directory is new and everything created in
the './project make' phase of the project will be created inside of this
directory.

To facilitate easy access to these top-level built directories, two new
variables are defined at the top of 'initialize.mk': 'badir', which is
short for "built-analysis directory" and 'bsdir', which is short for
"built-software directory".

HOW TO IMPLEMENT THIS CHANGE IN YOUR PROJECT. It is easy: simply replace
all occurances of '$(BDIR)' in your project's subMakefiles (except the ones
below) to '$(badir)'. To confirm if everything is fine before building your
project from scratch after merging, you can run the following command to
see where 'BDIR' is used and confirm the only remaning cases.

  $ grep -r BDIR reproduce/analysis/*
  --> make/verify.mk: innobdir=$$(echo $$infile | sed -e's|$(BDIR)/||g'); \
  --> make/initialize.mk:badir=$(BDIR)/analysis
  --> make/initialize.mk:bsdir=$(BDIR)/software
  --> make/initialize.mk:	$$sys_rm -rf $(BDIR)
  --> make/top-prepare.mk:all: $(BDIR)/software/preparation-done.mk

'BDIR' should only be present in lines of the files above. If you see
'$(BDIR)' used anywhere else, simply change it to '$(badir)'. Ofcourse, if
your project assumes BDIR in other contexts, feel free to keep it, it will
not conflict. If anything un-expected happens, please post a comment on the
link below (you need to be registered on Savannah to post a comment):

https://savannah.nongnu.org/task/?15855

One consequence of this change is that the 'analysis/' subdirectory can be
optionally mounted on a separate partition. The need for this actually came
up for some new users of Maneage in a Docker image. Docker can fix
portability problems on systems that we haven't yet supported (even
Windows!), or had a chance to fix low-level issues on. However, Docker
doesn't have a GUI interface. So to see the built PDF or intermediate data,
it was necessary to copy the built data to the host system after every
change, which is annoying during working on a project. It would also need
two copies of the source: one in the host, one in the container. All these
frustrations can be fixed with this new feature.

To describe this scenario, README.md now has a new section titled "Only
software environment in the Docker image". It explains step-by-step how you
can make a Docker image to only host the built software environment. While
your project's source, software tarballs and 'BDIR/analysis' directories
are on your host operating system. It has been tested before this commit
and works very nicely.

1 files changed, 133 insertions, 12 deletions

diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 98ba390..07f900f 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -199,15 +199,18 @@ projects from one system to another without rebuilding. Just note that
 Docker images are large binary files (+1 Gigabytes) and may not be usable
 in the future (for example with new Docker versions not reading old
 images). Containers are thus good for temporary/testing phases of a
-project, but shouldn't be what you archive! Hence if you want to save and
-move your maneaged project within a Docker image, be sure to commit all
-your project's source files and push them to your external Git repository
-(you can do these within the Docker image as explained below). This way,
-you can always recreate the container with future technologies
-too. Generally, if you are developing within a container, its good practice
-to recreate it from scratch every once in a while, to make sure you haven't
-forgot to include parts of your work in your project's version-controlled
-source.
+project, but shouldn't be what you archive for the long term!
+
+Hence if you want to save and move your maneaged project within a Docker
+image, be sure to commit all your project's source files and push them to
+your external Git repository (you can do these within the Docker image as
+explained below). This way, you can always recreate the container with
+future technologies too. Generally, if you are developing within a
+container, its good practice to recreate it from scratch every once in a
+while, to make sure you haven't forgot to include parts of your work in
+your project's version-controlled source. In the sections below we also
+describe how you can use the container **only for the software
+environment** and keep your data and project source on your host.
 
 #### Dockerfile for a Maneaged project, and building a Docker image
 
@@ -240,8 +243,11 @@ MB), not the full TeXLive collection!
     items). Note that the last two `COPY` lines (to copy the directory
     containing software tarballs used by the project and the possible input
     databases) are optional because they will be downloaded if not
-    available. Once you build the Docker image, your project's environment
-    is setup and you can go into it to run `./project make` manually.
+    available. You can also avoid copying over all, and simply mount your
+    host directories within the image, we have a separate section on doing
+    this below ("Only software environment in the Docker image"). Once you
+    build the Docker image, your project's environment is setup and you can
+    go into it to run `./project make` manually.
 
     ```shell
     FROM debian:stable-slim
@@ -300,7 +306,10 @@ MB), not the full TeXLive collection!
     ```
 
  4. **Copy project files into the container:** these commands make the
-    following assumptions:
+    assumptions listed below. IMPORTANT: you can also avoid copying over
+    all, and simply mount your host directories within the image, we have a
+    separate section on doing this below ("Only software environment in the
+    Docker image").
 
     * The project's source is in the `maneaged/` sub-directory and this
       directory is in the same directory as the `Dockerfile`. The source
@@ -377,6 +386,8 @@ MB), not the full TeXLive collection!
     docker build -t NAME ./
     ```
 
+
+
 #### Interactive tests on built container
 
 If you later want to start a container with the built image and enter it in
@@ -390,6 +401,8 @@ see below if you want to preserve your changes after you exit).
 docker run -it NAME
 ```
 
+
+
 #### Running your own project's shell for same analysis environment
 
 The default operating system only has minimal features: not having many of
@@ -406,6 +419,8 @@ cd source
 ./project shell
 ```
 
+
+
 #### Preserving the state of a built container
 
 All interactive changes in a container will be deleted as soon as you exit
@@ -429,6 +444,8 @@ docker container list
 docker commit XXXXXXX NEW-IMAGE-NAME
 ```
 
+
+
 #### Copying files from the Docker image to host operating system
 
 The Docker environment's file system is completely indepenent of your host
@@ -440,6 +457,110 @@ command).
 docker cp CONTAINER:/file/path/within/container /host/path/target
 ```
 
+
+
+#### Only software environment in the Docker image
+
+You can set the docker image to only contain the software environment and
+keep the project source and built analysis files (data and PDF) on your
+host operating system. This enables you to keep the size of the Docker
+image to a minimum (only containing the built software environment) to
+easily move it from one computer to another. Below we'll summarize the
+steps.
+
+1. Get your user ID with this command: `id -u`.
+
+2. Put the following lines into a `Dockerfile` of an otherwise empty
+directory. Just replacing `UID` with your user ID (found in the step
+above). This will build the basic directory structure. for the next steps.
+
+```shell
+FROM debian:stable-slim
+RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y gcc g++ wget
+RUN useradd -ms /bin/sh --uid UID maneager
+USER maneager
+WORKDIR /home/maneager
+RUN mkdir build
+```
+
+3. Create an image based on the `Dockerfile` above. Just replace `PROJECT`
+with your desired name.
+
+```shell
+docker build -t PROJECT ./
+```
+
+4. Run the command below to create a container based on the image and mount
+the desired directories on your host into the special directories of your
+container. Just don't forget to replace `PROJECT` and set the `/PATH`s to
+the respective paths in your host operating system.
+
+```shell
+docker run -v /PATH/TO/PROJECT/SOURCE:/home/maneager/source \
+           -v /PATH/TO/PROJECT/ANALYSIS/OUTPUTS:/home/maneager/build/analysis \
+           -v /PATH/TO/SOFTWARE/SOURCE/CODE/DIR:/home/maneager/software \
+           -v /PATH/TO/RAW/INPUT/DATA:/home/maneager/data \
+           -it PROJECT
+```
+
+5. After running the command above, you are within the container. Go into
+the project source directory and run these commands to build the software
+environment.
+
+```shell
+cd /home/maneager/source
+./project configure --build-dir=/home/maneager/build \
+                    --software-dir=/home/maneager/software \
+                    --input-dir=/home/maneager/data
+```
+
+6. After the configuration finishes successfully, it will say so and ask
+you to run `./project make`. But don't do that yet. Keep this Docker
+container open and don't exit the container or terminal. Open a new
+terminal, and follow the steps described in the sub-section above to
+preserve the built container as a Docker image. Let's assume you call it
+`PROJECT-ENV`. After the new image is made, you should be able to see the
+new image in the list of images with this command (in the same terminal
+that you created the image):
+
+```shell
+docker image list      # In the other terminal.
+```
+
+7. Now you can run `./project make` in the initial container. You will see
+that all the built products (temporary or final datasets or PDFs), will be
+written in the `/PATH/TO/PROJECT/ANALYSIS/OUTPUTS` directory of your
+host. You can even change the source of your project on your host operating
+system an re-run Make to see the effect on the outputs and add/commit the
+changes to your Git history within your host. You can also exit the
+container any time. You can later load the `PROJECT-ENV` environment image
+into a new container with the same `docker run -v ...` command above, just
+use `PROJECT-ENV` instead of `PROJECT`.
+
+8. In case you want to store the image as a single file as backup or to
+move to another computer, you can run the commands below. They will produce
+a single `project-env.tar.gz` file.
+
+```shell
+docker save -o project-env.tar PROJECT-ENV
+gzip --best project-env.tar
+```
+
+9. To load the tarball above into a clean docker environment (either on the
+same system or in another system), and create a new container from the
+image like above (the `docker run -v ...` command). Just don't forget that
+if your `/PATH/TO/PROJECT/ANALYSIS/OUTPUTS` directory is empty on the
+new/clean system, you should first run `./project configure -e` in the
+docker image so it builds the core file structure there. Don't worry, it
+won't build any software and should finish in a second or two. Afterwards,
+you can safely run `./project make`.
+
+```shell
+docker load --input project-env.tar.gz
+```
+
+
+
 #### Deleting all Docker images
 
 After doing your tests/work, you may no longer need the multi-gigabyte