How to use Crispulator module in interactive session

[braunb]

I had played with Crispulator in 2020 and am now dusting it back off. First, I am very glad to see it run seamlessly with the current version of Julia. I'm sure that refactoring was not trivial, but it is much appreciated. I can run it from the zsh shell using the example configuration file.

I'd like to have more programmatic control of the simulations, so I want to dive more into the system than simply running it from the shell. I have used the Pkg.develop line suggested in the docs to install Crispulator as a module in my base Julia environment (running MacOS). However, I am not sure how to really use it this way. One thing I am coming up against is that, when running from the command line, a lot of work is done in parse_yaml.jl and runconfig.jl, but these are not exposed as part of the module. I could download the repository and run these scripts (using include), but I'm not sure if that is really the right way to go.

My impression is that I should write the configuration code myself, using parse_yaml.jl as a guide. For example, I can start with
s = FacsScreen()
And then modify it as desired. But I though I should see if @tlnagy agrees.

Any advice for using Cripsulator in my custom Julia scripts?

[tlnagy]

For example, I can start with
s = FacsScreen()
And then modify it as desired. But I thought I should see if @tlnagy agrees.

That's exactly how I envisioned folks using Crispulator beyond the basic simulations. I recommend using it in an interactive environment like Jupyter Notebooks (via IJulia) or Pluto.jl and building a simulation as you describe. A basic example of this approach is described in the "Custom Simulation" section of the docs.