Create a command to easily make network topology

Problem

Each time we want to create a new topology, we need to manually specify the connections by dialing each node (whether that is in command line or using scripts). This is time consuming and error prone which is not ideal.

Goal

Make an interface that allows the following:

• Specify the number of nodes and the connections
• Doesn't need to manually dial each node to connect them
• Doesn't need to make each node listen on its web server

Proposed solution

We use a connection matrix, which tells us which nodes are connected to which. We write a parser for this connection matrix that will connect each node in the matrix as specified. Such a matrix would look like that:

	Node 0	Node 1	Node 2	Node 3	Node 4
Node 0	X	1	0	0	1
Node 1		X	1	0	0
Node 2			X	1	0
Node 3		SYM		X	1
Node 4					X

The table is symmetrical. It would produce the following topology:

The actual matrix would be a vector of vector (without the node 0, node 1 annotation, since the index in the matrix represents the connection). The parser would take the matrix and perform the following steps:

• app listen --node $SWARM.i.ip_port $SWARM.i.multiaddr where i is between 0 and the number of nodes -1 (now written as N)
• app dial:
  • start reading the first vector between index 1 and N. If the number is 1 at index j, do app dial --node $SWARM.0.ip_port $SWARM.j.multiaddr
  • Start reading the second vector between index 2 and N, if the number at index j is 1, do app dial --node $SWARM.1.ip_port $SWARM.j.multiaddr Basically we read between the line number +1 and N dialing on node line number to the node whose index is j for all the lines of the matrix.

We start reading at line number + 1 because the matrix is symmetrical and we don't need to dial the nodes twice

mentioned in merge request !12 (merged)

mentioned in commit aae772ff

closed with merge request !12 (merged)