Job outputfiles cannot be extended

[mesmith75]

It seems that one cannot add files to an existing list of outputfiles, only define a completely new list. This does not seem right to me:

Ganga In [6]: type(jobs(997).outputfiles)
Ganga Out [6]: GangaCore.GPIDev.Base.Proxy.GangaList

[21:02:04]
Ganga In [7]: jobs(997).outputfiles = []

[21:02:10]
Ganga In [8]: jobs(997).outputfiles
Ganga Out [8]: []

[21:02:12]
Ganga In [9]: jobs(997).outputfiles.append(LocalFile('model.root'))

[21:02:17]
Ganga In [10]: jobs(997).outputfiles
Ganga Out [10]: []

[mesmith75]

This works fine for inputfiles - so somewhere we are treating outputfiles as special. It could be around here: https://github.com/ganga-devs/ganga/blob/da620e6914e59de3dd76adcb0c53ea03a7411ffc/ganga/GangaCore/GPIDev/Lib/Job/Job.py#L583C1-L583C1
If I change that to return self.outputfiles then the new files are appended as expected. However I assume there is a reason this extra complication is there?

[egede]

To fix this will require to change the way that the GangaList object works. It should instead be inside the GangaList object that the expansion of the wildcards. But the GangaList is used for things that are not files, so how should this be solved?

[egede]

This will require a bit more research into what current behaviour is, and how we want to change it.

[KisuZoid]

hey @egede @mesmith75

This will require a bit more research into what current behaviour is, and how we want to change it.

is there any conclusion regarding the functionality of the "GangaList".

[egede]

Looking at this again, I think the critical point is that we for outputfiles return a new object rather than a reference to the old object. That means that when you append, you just append to this copy and the result is ignored. So the code will have to be rewritten to avoid that we make this copy. Feel free to give it a go.

[KisuZoid]

@egede, Thanks. I will try to rectify that issue and update as soon as possible.

Proposed solution: The issue is that the outputfiles property returns a copy of the list, so in-place modifications (like append) are lost. We should change it to return the actual list (or provide proper mutator methods). I'll work on a fix.

[egede]

Make sure to run the tests in GangaCore/test/Unit and GangaCore/test/GPI locally when you have made changes. The CI testing shows clearly how you can run the tests.