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Altair FlowTracer User Guide
FlowTracer is a complete system to create, manage, and execute design flows.
Run, Rerun, Stop and Kill Jobs
The act of requesting FlowTracer to bring a particular target up-to-date is sometimes called a Retrace Request or more simply a Retrace.
Rerun the down-cone of a File (kicking a file)

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View new features for FlowTracer 2025.1.2.
FlowTracer Overview
An advanced mission critical dependency management platform for developing and executing flows.
FlowTracer Tutorials
Discover FlowTracer functionality with interactive tutorials.
Altair FlowTracer User Guide
FlowTracer is a complete system to create, manage, and execute design flows.
- FlowTracer Roles
  When using FlowTracer in large deployments, three main roles emerge: Administrator, Developer and User. In smaller organizations, a given person may have multiple roles, but the duties of each role still exist.
- Introduction to VOV
  FlowTracer is derived from the system "VOV" originally developed at UC-Berkeley. The word "VOV" is not an acronym, but can be thought of as a contraction of the word "evolve".
- Concepts and Terminology
- Run, Rerun, Stop and Kill Jobs
  The act of requesting FlowTracer to bring a particular target up-to-date is sometimes called a Retrace Request or more simply a Retrace.
  - Run and Rerun
  - Rerun from the Browser
    When visiting a page for a set of nodes, you can start a run using the Run bar. The bar allows you to select priority and flags.
  - Rerun from the GUI
  - Rerun from the Command Line Interface
    From the CLI, you can request FlowTracer to run with the command vsr.
  - Rerun the down-cone of a File (kicking a file)
  - Rerun Modes
    There are several "modes" of running (retracing), having to do with the way jobs are scheduled and the way jobs are executed. The default mode of execution is "SAFE".
  - Priority
    The scheduling priority affects the order in which the jobs are scheduled. The range is 1 to 15.
  - Rerun Failed Jobs
    A job is labeled as FAILED if something has gone wrong during the execution of the job.
  - Job Life Cycle During a Run
  - Avoid Expensive Reruns
    Sometimes a complete run may take too much time, and you may want to find ways to bypass an expensive execution, at least in the short term, in order to focus on a more urgent issue.
  - Check All Files in a Project
    When you request a run, the FlowTracer server checks the timestamp of all primary inputs in the up-cone of the target.
  - Job Queue
    For each run request (which calculates the runtime tracing graph), VOV creates a set to contain all the jobs to be executed to satisfy the request. Then VOV takes all the jobs that are ready to execute and places them into the Job Queue in order of priority.
  - Dequeue and Stop Jobs
    Often we use the verb "stop" in a loose fashion, but in this section it is important to distinguish "dequeue" from "stop". Dequeuing only impacts scheduled jobs and leaves running jobs unaffected, while "stopping" really means killing jobs that are running.
  - Kill Processes using the CLI
    In order to kill a job, you must be on the machine on which the job is running, identify the PID of the job and then send the Kill signal to the PID.
- Find, Remove and Clean Files
- Graphical User Interface
- Browser Interface
  The URL to the FlowTracer web server is the entry point into the FlowTracer web application for managing the product. The URL is composed of a domain name and a port number and the path to the web application.
- Command Line Interface
  The Altair Accelerator products have a rich set of programs that can be run on the shell command line.
- Create Sets with Selection Rules
- Advanced Information
- Troubleshooting
- Create a FlowTracer Project
- Resource Management
  Altair Accelerator includes a subsystem for managing computing resources. This allows the design team to factor in various constraints regarding hardware and software resources, as well as site policy constraints.
- Rename Nodes
  Renaming of nodes is a task for more advanced users. In most cases, it is simpler to forget all nodes and rebuild the trace from scratch.
- Miscellaneous
- Reports
Altair FlowTracer Administrator Guide
This manual is aimed at the person who will be the administrator for FlowTracer. This person will be responsible for configuring the network resources, setting up the licensing, and establishing security and access rules for the system.
Altair FlowTracer Developer Guide

Rerun the down-cone of a File (kicking a file)

If you change a file and would like to run all jobs that are affected by the change, use:

% vsr -kick name_or_VovId_of_changed_file

You can get a list of all active runs with the command:

% vovshow -retraces
ID       DESCRIPTION                     USER      SIZE MESSAGE 
014435890 tmp:retrace:set:tmp:UserSelect john         2      
014435949 tmp:retrace:set:System:nodes   andrea    1321              
014435969 tmp:retrace:set:System:nodes   andrea    1322