You might want to control the order in which your FireWorks are run. Setting job priority is simple. A few notes:
- FireWorks with any value of priority will be run before jobs without a priority defined. If two FireWorks have the same priority, one of those jobs will be chosen randomly (you can also choose FIFO and FILO ordering for equal-priority FireWorks via the FW config).
If you would like to set the priority of a FireWork after you have already entered it into the LaunchPad, you can do so via the command:
lpad set_priority -i <FW_IDS> <PRIORITY>
where <FW_IDS> is the numerical id of the FireWork you want to set the priority of (or a list of space-separated ids), and <PRIORITY is the priority to assign.
Instead of specifying ids, you can also specify a name (-n), a state (-s), or a custom query (-q). The full command is thus:
lpad rerun_fws [-i FW_IDS] [-n NAME] [-s STATE] [-q QUERY] <PRIORITY>
Refer to the documentation (lpad set_priority -h) for more information.
To set job priority, simply set a key named _priority in your FireWork spec to your desired priority. FireWorks will automatically prioritize jobs based on their value of this key.
Imagine we have two workflows, A and B, with two steps each (1 and 2). We want to run workflow A in its entirety before beginning workflow B. Our execution should follow the blue arrow:
Let’s examine how we can set up such an execution model.
Move to the A_then_B subdirectory of the priority tutorial directory on your FireServer:
cd <INSTALL_DIR>/fw_tutorials/priority/A_then_B
Look inside the files wfA.yaml and wfB.yaml. You’ll notice that the _priority key for both steps of wfA.yaml is set to 2, whereas the corresponding values for the steps of wfB.yaml are only 1. This means that workflow A will execute in its entirety before starting workflow B.
Add and run the FireWorks to confirm:
lpad reset
lpad add *.yaml
rlaunch -s rapidfire
You should have noticed text printed to the Terminal in the following order:
Task A-1
Task A-2
Task B-1
Task B-2
Let’s now try another execution order: A-1, B-1, B-2, A-2.
Move to the breadthfirst subdirectory of the priority tutorial directory on your FireServer:
cd <INSTALL_DIR>/fw_tutorials/priority/breadthfirst
Look inside the files wfA.yaml and wfB.yaml. You’ll notice that this time, the _priority key is highest for step A-1 and lowest for step A-2, corresponding to our desired execution order.
Add and run the FireWorks to confirm:
lpad reset
lpad add *.yaml
rlaunch -s rapidfire
You should have noticed text printed to the Terminal in the following order:
Task A-1
Task B-1
Task B-2
Task A-2