3. Minimal

3.1. Synopsis

Figure 2. The minimal agent and its breed

This examples exhibits the basic MadKit agent lifecycle, and shows how to launch or kill other agents.

3.2. Using the agent

Just launch it ! It will print messages upon activation and run, and launch another agent (a Ping-Pong instance) after 10 seconds delay, and then terminates it.

3.3. About the code

Two notable security restrictions: you can kill an agent from another only if you are the agent which created it. Another fact about the MadKit agent lifecycle: you can use agent-related calls in an agent only after this agent has been launched (and thus registered in the kernel). This means that for instance, you cannot use message passing, or group & role manipulation in the agent class constructor. You must use the calls only in the activate(), run() or end().