Viash 0.6.0 – Viash

What’s new?

The first (major) release this year! The biggest changes are:

Nextflow VDSL3 is now the default Nextflow platform, whereas the legacy Nextflow platform has been deprecated.
Support for tracking memory and cpu requirements more elegantly.
Grouping arguments in groups more concisely.
The addition of a viash ns exec command, to be able to execute commands on Viash components more easily.

Full changelog

BREAKING CHANGES

NextflowPlatform: variant: vdsl3 is now the default NextflowPlatform. variant: legacy has been deprecated.

Functionality: Fields .inputs and .outputs has been deprecated. Please use .argument_groups instead (#186). Before:

functionality:
  inputs:
    - name: "--foo"
  outputs:
    - name: "--bar"

Now:

functionality:
  argument_groups:
    - name: Inputs
      arguments:
        - name: "--foo"
          type: file
    - name: Outputs
      arguments:
        - name: "--bar"
          type: file
          direction: output

Passing strings to an argument group’s arguments has been deprecated. Please simply copy the argument itself into the argument group (#186). Before:

functionality:
  arguments:
    - name: "--foo"
      type: file
    - name: "--bar"
      type: file
      direction: output
  argument_groups:
    - name: Inputs
      arguments: [ foo ]
    - name: Outputs
      arguments: [ bar ]

Now:

functionality:
  argument_groups:
    - name: Inputs
      arguments:
        - name: "--foo"
          type: file
    - name: Outputs
      arguments:
        - name: "--bar"
          type: file
          direction: output

NEW FUNCTIONALITY

Allow setting the number of processes and memory limit from within the Viash config, as well as a list of required commands. Example:
```
functionality:
name: foo
requirements:
  cpus: 10
  memory: 10GB
  commands: [ bash, r, perl ]
```
You can override the default requirements at runtime:
- ./foo ---cpus 4 ---memory 100PB (for NativePlatform or DockerPlatform)
- By adding process.cpus = 4 and process.memory "100 PB" to a nextflow.config (for NextflowPlatform)
This results the following meta variables to be injected into a script:
- meta_cpus (in Bash) or meta["cpus"] (in any other language): Number of processes the script is allowed to spawn.
- meta_memory_b (in Bash) or meta["memory_b"] (in any other language): Amount of memory the script is allowed to allocate, in bytes.
- meta_memory_kb (in Bash) or meta["memory_kb"] (in any other language): Same but in kilobytes, rounded up.
- meta_memory_mb (in Bash) or meta["memory_mb"] (in any other language): Same but in megabytes, rounded up.
- meta_memory_gb (in Bash) or meta["memory_gb"] (in any other language): Same but in gigabytes, rounded up.
- meta_memory_tb (in Bash) or meta["memory_tb"] (in any other language): Same but in terabytes, rounded up.
- meta_memory_pb (in Bash) or meta["memory_pb"] (in any other language): Same but in petabytes, rounded up.
viash ns exec: Added a command for executing arbitrary commands for all found Viash components. The syntax of this command is inspired by find . -exec echo {} \;.

The following fields are automatically replaced:
- {} | {path}: path to the config file
- {abs-path}: absolute path to the config file
- {dir}: path to the parent directory of the config file
- {abs-dir}: absolute path to the directory of the config file
- {main-script}: path to the main script (if any)
- {abs-main-script}: absolute path to the main script (if any)
- {functionality-name}: name of the component
A command suffixed by \; (or nothing) will execute one command for each of the Viash components, whereas a command suffixed by + will execute one command for all Viash components.
ConfigMod: Added a del(...) config mod to be able to delete a value from the yaml. Example: del(.functionality.version).

MAJOR CHANGES

Folder structure: Adjusted the folder structure to correctly reflect the the namespace change of viash from com.dataintuitive.viash to io.viash.
Functionality: Reworked the enabled field from boolean to a status field which can have the following statusses: enabled, disabled and deprecated. When parsing a config file which has the status field set to deprecated a warning message is displayed on stderr. Backwards for enabled is provided where enabled: true => status: enabled and enabled: false => status: false. The enabled field is marked deprecated.

MINOR CHANGES

Resources: Handle edge case when no resources are specified in the vsh.yaml config file and display a warning message.
BashWrapper: Add a warning when an argument containing flags (e.g. --foo) is not recognized and will be handled as a positional argument as this is likely a mistake.
Functionality: Add check to verify there are no double argument names or short names in the config vsh.yaml declarations.
BashWrapper: Add check to verify a parameter isn’t declared twice on the CLI, except in the case multiple: true is declared as then it’s a valid use case.
BashWrapper: For int min/max checking: use native bash functionality so there is no dependency to bc. For double min/max checking: add fallback code to use awk in case bc is not present on the system (most likely to happen when running tests in a docker container).
viash ns list/viash config view: Allow viewing the post-processed argument groups by passing the --parse_argument_groups parameter.

TESTING

ConfigMod: Added unit tests for condition config mods.
MainTestDockerSuite: Derive config alternatives from the base vsh.yaml instead of adding the changes in separate files. This both reduces file clutter and prevents having to change several files when there are updates in the config format.
GitTest: Added unit tests for Git helper (PR #216).

BUG FIXES

csharp_script, javascript_script, python_script, r_script, scala_script: Make meta fields for memory and cpus optional.
NextflowVdsl3Platform: Don’t generate an error when --publish_dir is not defined and -profile no_publish is used.
Viash run: Viash now properly returns the exit code from the executed script.
Git: Fix incorrect metadata when git repository is empty (PR #216).