Customizing modules in Tentacle¶
Tentacle is constructed using a modular approach making it easy to customize and modify. A common modification or addition to Tentacle could be to add support for an additional mapping software.
Creating/modifying mapper modules¶
Within the Tentacle folder structure, the mapper modules are located in
$TENTACLE_ROOT/tentacle/mappers. If Tentacle was installed using pip
into a virtualenv, the mapper modules must be placed (or symlinked) in
$TENTACLE_VENV/lib/python2.7/site-packages/tentacle/mappers so that
Tentacle can find them. Do not forget to add an import line in the
tentacle/mappers/__init__.py as well!
Mapper modules inherit from the base mapper class, as seen in the example
mapper modules that are provided with Tentacle. To create a new mapper module,
copy one of the others, change the filename and modify it to suit your mapper.
Make sure that the mapper you want to use is available in your PATH
variable.
Another important aspect to consider when adding support for an additional mapper
is that there needs to be a parser that can extract the information Tentacle
requires from the mapper’s output files. All such parsers are located in the submodule
tentacle.parsers. See Parsers.