.. NutShell documentation master file, created by
   sphinx-quickstart on Sat May  2 15:54:03 2020.
   You can adapt this file completely to your liking, but it should at least
   contain the root `toctree` directive.



Welcome to NutShell's documentation!
====================================


**NutShell is software for generating "file products": image, data and text files.
NutShell suits to generation of real time products as well as to
regenerating products on-demand from archived data.**

The product generation scheme resembles that of ``make`` and
``Makefile``: if a product needs inputs, they are generated first, recursively.
The applied *product generators* are organized systematically in a directory tree.
Each product has an ID of type ``my.good.product`` that is associated with
path component ``my/good/product/``.  Hence, a product generator can be
tracked to -- and also identified with -- a unique
subdirectory, which also contains a *generator script* with a fixed
name (``generate.sh``).

Typically, command line invocations of programs have a form like: ::

  command -i <input-file>  -p <parameter> -o <output-file>

Essentially, a generator script is a wrapper for such commands.
  
Upon *product request*, NutShell finds and executes a respective product generator script,
communicating parameters -- file paths and product parameters among others -- as environment variables
to the script. This is the "amount of interface" a script is required to handle.
In addition, the product generator can query its desired inputs from NutShell using input
declaration script (``input.sh``).  
Otherwise product generators can be designed independently from NutShell. For example, no libraries or
other dependencies beyond production itself are required.

NutShell provides a platform for collecting programming efforts of developers and researchers using
different languages and interfaces. It has been originally developed for generating weather radar products [Peura2008]_,
but suits to product computation more generally.

*  Installation: GitHub_


=========
Contents
=========

.. toctree::
   :maxdepth: 3

   nutshell-overview
   nutshell-usage
   nutshell-commands
   nutshell-config
   nutshell-generators	      
   nutshell-variables
   nutshell-demo  
   nutshell-code
   nutshell-tests
		

		  
		     
Indices and tables
==================

* :ref:`genindex`
* :ref:`modindex`
* :ref:`search`


References
==========

.. [Peura2008] Markus Peura,
    `On-demand processing architecture for radar image products, <erad2008-0004-extended.pdf>`_
    Proceedings of the fifth European Conference on Radar in Meteorology and Hydrology (ERAD2008),
    Helsinki, Finland, Finnish Meteorological Institute, June 2008

.. _GitHub: https://github.com/fmidev/nutshell