Flow Language Procedures

FDL Procedures

Name Description
A Add annotations to the most recently declared node.
AD Declare an artificial dependency between two jobs.
D Set the database for subsequent files.
E Set the environment for subsequent jobs.
FLAGS Specify additional flags for the most recent job.
I Declare an input dependency.
J Declare a job and use the capsule to compute IO's (see also T and P).
L Set the legal exit values for subsequent jobs.
N Set the jobname.
O Declare an output dependency. All jobs require at least one output to be valid.
P Add a property to the most recently mentioned object.
PARALLEL Declare the parallelism between two or more tasks and subflows (See also TASK and SERIAL).
PJ Declare a job to be executed periodically (see also T and J).
PRIORITY Set the priority to be used for the subsequent jobs.
R Set resources for subsequent jobs.
RUNMODE Set 'runmode' for subsequent jobs.
S Precise definition of a set of jobs.
S+ Append jobs to a set.
SERIAL Serially order a number of tasks and subflows (See also TASK and PARALLEL).
START Start running jobs -- rarely used.
T Declare a job (see also PJ and J).
TASK Declare a job with no specific dependencies (see also SERIAL and PARALLEL).
X Set the expected duration for subsequent jobs.
Z Set the zippable flag for a list of files.

Flow Library Procedures

Name Description
Description {doc} Give a description of the flow.
Keywords {list of words} Assign keywords to the flow, to aid searches.
Parameter Describe a parameter of the flow.
GetAllParameters Get the flow parameters using one of the following methods:
  • The command line, using options to vovbuild with the following format -parameterName=parameterValue
  • An HTML form
RequiredFile file {example ""} Describe a file that is required by the flow. If the specified file does not exist and example is not null, then the example is copied. If the file does not exists, or if it cannot be copied from example, an error is generated.
RequiredDirectory { directory } Describe a directory that is required by the flow. If the specified directory does not exists, an error is generated.

Other Useful Procedures

Name Description
shift Get the next argument from argv
safeshift Same as above, but with better error messaging if argv is empty
indir Execute a code fragment in a directory
RECONCILE_WITH_FILE_SYSTEM Used to recover the status of a flow based on the current timestamps of files