Chaining rules

Last updated on 2024-05-02 | Edit this page

Overview

Questions

  • “How do I combine rules into a workflow?”
  • “How do I make a rule with multiple inputs and outputs?”

Objectives

  • “”

A pipeline of multiple rules

We now have a rule that can generate output for any value of -p and any number of tasks, we just need to call Snakemake with the parameters that we want:

BASH 

snakemake --profile cluster_profile p_0.999/runs/amdahl_run_6.json

That’s not exactly convenient though, to generate a full dataset we have to run Snakemake lots of times with different output file targets. Rather than that, let’s create a rule that can generate those files for us.

Chaining rules in Snakemake is a matter of choosing filename patterns that connect the rules. There’s something of an art to it - most times there are several options that will work:

PYTHON 

rule generate_run_files:
    output: "p_{parallel_proportion}_runs.txt"
    input:  "p_{parallel_proportion}/runs/amdahl_run_6.json"
    shell:
        "echo {input} done > {output}"

Challenge

The new rule is doing no work, it’s just making sure we create the file we want. It’s not worth executing on the cluster. How do ensure it runs on the login node only?

We need to add the new rule to our localrules:

PYTHON 

localrules: hostname_login, generate_run_files

Now let’s run the new rule (remember we need to request the output file by name as the output in our rule contains a wildcard pattern):

BASH 

[ocaisa@node1 ~]$ snakemake --profile cluster_profile/ p_0.999_runs.txt

OUTPUT 

Using profile cluster_profile/ for setting default command line arguments.
Building DAG of jobs...
Retrieving input from storage.
Using shell: /cvmfs/software.eessi.io/versions/2023.06/compat/linux/x86_64/bin/bash
Provided remote nodes: 3
Job stats:
job                   count
------------------  -------
amdahl_run                1
generate_run_files        1
total                     2

Select jobs to execute...
Execute 1 jobs...

[Tue Jan 30 17:39:29 2024]
rule amdahl_run:
    output: p_0.999/runs/amdahl_run_6.json
    jobid: 1
    reason: Missing output files: p_0.999/runs/amdahl_run_6.json
    wildcards: parallel_proportion=0.999, parallel_tasks=6
    resources: mem_mb=1000, mem_mib=954, disk_mb=1000, disk_mib=954,
               tmpdir=<TBD>, mem_mb_per_cpu=3600, runtime=2, mpi=mpiexec, tasks=6

mpiexec -n 6 amdahl --terse -p 0.999 > p_0.999/runs/amdahl_run_6.json
No SLURM account given, trying to guess.
Guessed SLURM account: def-users
Job 1 has been submitted with SLURM jobid 342 (log: /home/ocaisa/.snakemake/slurm_logs/rule_amdahl_run/342.log).
[Tue Jan 30 17:47:31 2024]
Finished job 1.
1 of 2 steps (50%) done
Select jobs to execute...
Execute 1 jobs...

[Tue Jan 30 17:47:31 2024]
localrule generate_run_files:
    input: p_0.999/runs/amdahl_run_6.json
    output: p_0.999_runs.txt
    jobid: 0
    reason: Missing output files: p_0.999_runs.txt;
            Input files updated by another job: p_0.999/runs/amdahl_run_6.json
    wildcards: parallel_proportion=0.999
    resources: mem_mb=1000, mem_mib=954, disk_mb=1000, disk_mib=954,
               tmpdir=/tmp, mem_mb_per_cpu=3600, runtime=2

echo p_0.999/runs/amdahl_run_6.json done > p_0.999_runs.txt
[Tue Jan 30 17:47:31 2024]
Finished job 0.
2 of 2 steps (100%) done
Complete log: .snakemake/log/2024-01-30T173929.781106.snakemake.log

Look at the logging messages that Snakemake prints in the terminal. What has happened here?

  1. Snakemake looks for a rule to make p_0.999_runs.txt
  2. It determines that “generate_run_files” can make this if parallel_proportion=0.999
  3. It sees that the input needed is therefore p_0.999/runs/amdahl_run_6.json
  4. Snakemake looks for a rule to make p_0.999/runs/amdahl_run_6.json
  5. It determines that “amdahl_run” can make this if parallel_proportion=0.999 and parallel_tasks=6
  6. Now Snakemake has reached an available input file (in this case, no input file is actually required), it runs both steps to get the final output

This, in a nutshell, is how we build workflows in Snakemake.

  1. Define rules for all the processing steps
  2. Choose input and output naming patterns that allow Snakemake to link the rules
  3. Tell Snakemake to generate the final output file(s)

If you are used to writing regular scripts this takes a little getting used to. Rather than listing steps in order of execution, you are alway working backwards from the final desired result. The order of operations is determined by applying the pattern matching rules to the filenames, not by the order of the rules in the Snakefile.

Outputs first?

The Snakemake approach of working backwards from the desired output to determine the workflow is why we’re putting the output lines first in all our rules - to remind us that these are what Snakemake looks at first!

Many users of Snakemake, and indeed the official documentation, prefer to have the input first, so in practice you should use whatever order makes sense to you.

log outputs in Snakemake

Snakemake has a dedicated rule field for outputs that are log files, and these are mostly treated as regular outputs except that log files are not removed if the job produces an error. This means you can look at the log to help diagnose the error. In a real workflow this can be very useful, but in terms of learning the fundamentals of Snakemake we’ll stick with regular input and output fields here.

Errors are normal

Don’t be disheartened if you see errors when first testing your new Snakemake pipelines. There is a lot that can go wrong when writing a new workflow, and you’ll normally need several iterations to get things just right. One advantage of the Snakemake approach compared to regular scripts is that Snakemake fails fast when there is a problem, rather than ploughing on and potentially running junk calculations on partial or corrupted data. Another advantage is that when a step fails we can safely resume from where we left off.

Key Points

  • “Snakemake links rules by iteratively looking for rules that make missing inputs”
  • “Rules may have multiple named inputs and/or outputs”
  • “If a shell command does not yield an expected output then Snakemake will regard that as a failure”