Note: FireWorks is under active development. It is currently incomplete and not useable as workflow software. However, certain components of the code are available for initial testing.
FireWorks is a code for defining, managing, and executing scientific workflows. It can be used to automate most types of calculations over arbitrary computing resources, including those that have a queueing system.
FireWorks is intended to be a friendly workflow software that is easy to get started with, but flexible enough to handle complicated use cases.
Some (but not all) of its features include:
Some limitations of FireWorks include:
It can be time-consuming to evaluate whether a workflow software will meet your computing needs from documentation alone. If you just want to know whether FireWorks is a potential solution to your workflow problem, one option is to e-mail a description of your problem to the developer at:
We can tell you if:
To get started with FireWorks, we suggest that you follow our core tutorials. These tutorials will set up a central server as well as worker computers. They will also demonstrate how to define and run basic workflows. We expect that completing all of the core tutorials will take between one and three hours. (You might want to get a snack...)
Depending on your application, you might also be interested in the following tutorials:
Planned future tutorials:
Want to see something added or changed? There are many ways to make that a reality! Some ways to get involved are:
The collaborative way to submit questions, issues, and all other communication is through the FireWorks Github page. You can also contact:
Michael Kocher and Dan Gunter initiated the architecture of a central database with multiple workers that queued ‘placeholder’ scripts responsible for checking out jobs. Some of Michael’s code was refashioned for the QueueLauncher and the PBS QueueAdapter.
Shyue Ping Ong was extremely helpful in providing guidance and feedback, as well as the nitty gritty of getting set up with Sphinx documentation, PyPI, etc. The code for modifying a FireWork specification using a dictionary (DictMod) was adapted from his custodian library. If you are in the market for a free Python materials analysis code, I highly recommend his pymatgen library (which I also sometimes contribute to).
Wei Chen was the first test pilot of FireWorks, and contributed greatly to improving the docs and ensuring that FireWorks installation went smoothly for others. In addition, he made many suggestions to improve the usability of the code.
FireWorks was developed primarily at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab using research funding from Kristin Persson for the Materials Project.
FireWorks is developed under the MIT License (a very permissive license), reproduced below:
The MIT License (MIT)
Copyright (c) 2011-2012 LBNL, Anubhav Jain
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of
this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in
the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to
use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of
the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so,
subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS
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