Section: New Results

Reconstructing the Software Environment of an Experiment

In the scientific experimentation process, an experiment result needs to be analyzed and compared with several others, potentially obtained in different conditions. Thus, the experimenter needs to be able to redo the experiment. Several tools are dedicated to the control of the experiment input parameters and the experiment replay. In parallel concurrent and distributed systems, experiment conditions are not only restricted to the input parameters, but also to the software environment in which the experiment was carried out. It is therefore essential to be able to reconstruct this type of environment. The task can quickly become complex for experimenters, particularly on research platforms dedicated to scientific experimentation, where both hardware and software are in constant rapid evolution. In [19] we discuss the concept of the reconstructability of software environments and propose a tool, Kameleon, for dealing with this problem.