;;; ccwl --- Concise Common Workflow Language ;;; Copyright © 2021, 2023–2024 Arun Isaac ;;; ;;; This file is part of ccwl. ;;; ;;; ccwl is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it ;;; under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by ;;; the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or ;;; (at your option) any later version. ;;; ;;; ccwl is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but ;;; WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of ;;; MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU ;;; General Public License for more details. ;;; ;;; You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License ;;; along with ccwl. If not, see . (use-modules (skribilo lib) (doc skribilo)) (document :title [Concise Common Workflow Language] (toc) (chapter :title [Introduction] :ident "chapter-introduction" (p [,(abbr :short "CWL" :long "Common Workflow Language") is an open standard for describing analysis workflows and tools in a way that makes them portable and scalable across a variety of software and hardware environments.]) (p [,(abbr :short "ccwl" :long "Concise Common Workflow Language") is a concise syntax to express CWL workflows. It is implemented as an ,(abbr :short "EDSL" :long "Embedded Domain Specific Language") in the Scheme programming language, a minimalist dialect of the Lisp family of programming languages.]) (p [ccwl is a compiler to generate CWL workflows from concise descriptions in ccwl. In the future, ccwl will also have a runtime whereby users can interactively execute workflows while developing them.])) (chapter :title [Tutorial] :ident "chapter-tutorial" (p [This tutorial will introduce you to writing workflows in ccwl. Some knowledge of CWL is assumed. To learn about CWL, please see the ,(ref :url "https://www.commonwl.org/user_guide/" :text "Common Workflow Language User Guide")]) (section :title [Important concepts] :ident "section-important-concepts" (p [The CWL and ccwl workflow languages are statically typed programming languages where functions accept multiple named inputs and return multiple named outputs. Let’s break down what that means.]) (subsection :title [Static typing] (p [In CWL, the type of arguments accepted by a function and the type of outputs returned by that function are specified explicitly by the programmer, and are known at compile time even before the code has been run. Hence, we say that it is statically typed.])) (subsection :title [Positional arguments and named arguments] (p [In many languages, the order of arguments passed to a function is significant. The position of each argument determines which formal argument it gets mapped to. For example, passing positional arguments in Scheme looks like ,(code "(foo 1 2)"). However, in a language that supports named arguments (say, Scheme or Python), the order of arguments is not significant. Each argument explicitly names the formal argument it gets mapped to. For example, in Scheme, passing named arguments may look like ,(code "(foo #:bar 1 #:baz 2)") and is equivalent to ,(code "(foo #:baz 2 #:bar 1)"). Likewise, in Python, passing named arguments looks like ,(code "foo(bar=1, baz=2)") and is equivalent to ,(code "foo(baz=2, bar=1)").])) (subsection :title [Multiple function arguments and return values] (p [In most languages, functions accept multiple input arguments but only return a single output value. However, in CWL, a function can return multiple output values as well. These multiple outputs are unordered and are each addressed by a unique name.]))) (section :title [First example] :ident "section-first-example" (p [As is tradition, let us start with a simple ,(emph "Hello World") workflow in ccwl. This workflow accepts a string input and prints that string.]) (scheme-source "doc/hello-world.scm") (p [The first form in this code defines the ,(code "print") command. This form is the equivalent of defining a ,(code "CommandLineTool") class workflow in CWL. The arguments after ,(code "#:inputs") define the inputs to the workflow. The arguments after ,(code "#:run") specify the command that will be run. The input ,(code "(message #:type 'string)") defines a ,(code "string") type input named ,(code "message"). The command defined in the ,(code "#:run") argument is the command itself followed by a list of command arguments. One of the arguments references the input ,(code "message"). Notice how the command definition is very close to a shell command, only that it is slightly annotated with inputs and their types.]) (p [The second form describes the actual workflow and is the equivalent of defining a ,(code "Workflow") class workflow in CWL. The form ,(code "((message #:type string))") specifies the inputs of the workflow. In this case, there is only one input---,(code "message") of type ,(code "string"). The body of the workflow specifies the commands that will be executed. The body of this workflow executes only a single command---the ,(code "print") command---passing the ,(code "message") input of the workflow as the ,(code "message") input to the ,(code "print") command.]) (p [If this workflow is written to a file ,(file "hello-world.scm"), we may compile it to CWL by running]) (prog :line #f [$ ccwl compile hello-world.scm]) (p [This prints a big chunk of generated CWL to standard output. We have achieved quite a lot of concision already! We write the generated CWL to a file and execute it using (command "cwltool") as follows. The expected output is also shown.]) (prog :line #f (source :file "doc/hello-world.out"))) (section :title [Capturing the standard output stream of a command] :ident "section-capturing-stdout" (p [Let us return to the ,(emph "Hello World") example in the previous section. But now, let us capture the standard output of the ,(code "print") command in an output object. The ccwl code is the same as earlier with the addition of an ,(code "stdout") type output object and an ,(code "#:stdout") parameter specifying the name of the file to capture standard output in.]) (scheme-source "doc/capture-stdout.scm") (p [Let’s write this code to a file ,(file "capture-stdout.scm"), generate CWL, write the generated CWL to ,(file "capture-stdout.cwl"), and run it using ,(code "cwltool"). We might expect something like the output below. Notice how the standard output of the ,(code "print") command has been captured in the file ,(file "printed-message-output.txt").]) (prog :line #f (source :file "doc/capture-stdout.out"))) (section :title [Capturing output files] :ident "section-capturing-output-files" (p [In the previous section, we captured the standard output stream of a command. But, how do we capture any output files created by a command? Let us see.]) (p [Consider a tar archive ,(file "hello.tar") containing a file ,(file "hello.txt").]) (prog :line #f (source :file "doc/hello.tar.out")) (p [Let us write a workflow to extract the file ,(file "hello.txt") from the archive. Everything in the following workflow except the ,(code "#:binding") parameter will already be familiar to you. The ,(code "#:binding") parameter sets the ,(code "outputBinding") field in the generated CWL. In the example below, we set the ,(code "glob") field to look for a file named ,(file "hello.txt").]) (scheme-source "doc/capture-output-file.scm") (p [Writing this workflow to ,(file "capture-output-file.scm"), compiling and running it gives us the following output. Notice that the file ,(file "hello.txt") has been captured and is now present in our current working directory.]) (prog :line #f (source :file "doc/capture-output-file.out")) (p [The above workflow is not awfully flexible. The name of the file to extract is hardcoded into the workflow. Let us modify the workflow to accept the name of the file to extract. We introduce ,(code "extractfile"), a ,(code "string") type input that is passed to ,(command "tar") and is referenced in the ,(code "glob") field.]) (scheme-source "doc/capture-output-file-with-parameter-reference.scm") (p [Compiling and running this workflow gives us the following output.]) (prog :line #f (source :file "doc/capture-output-file-with-parameter-reference.out"))) (section :title [Passing input into the standard input stream of a command] :ident "section-passing-input-into-stdin" (p [Some commands read input from their standard input stream. Let us do that from ccwl. The workflow below reports the size of a file by passing it into the standard input of ,(command "wc"). Notice the additional ,(code "#:stdin") keyword that references the input ,(code "file").]) (scheme-source "doc/pass-stdin.scm") (p [Compiling and running this workflow gives us the following output. Notice the file ,(file "hello.txt") passed into the standard input of ,(command "wc"), and the file size reported in bytes.]) (prog :line #f (source :file "doc/pass-stdin.out"))) (section :title [Workflow with multiple steps] :ident "section-workflow-with-multiple-steps" (p [Till now, we have only written trivial workflows with a single command. If we were only interested in executing single commands, we would hardly need a workflow language! So, in this section, let us write our first multi-step workflow and learn how to connect steps together in an arbitrary topology.]) (subsection :title [pipe] (p [First, the simplest of topologies---a linear chain representing sequential execution of steps. The following workflow decompresses a compressed C source file, compiles and then executes it.]) (scheme-source "doc/decompress-compile-run.scm") (p [Notice the ,(source-ref "ccwl/ccwl.scm" "\\(\\(pipe" (code "pipe")) form in the body of the workflow. The ,(code "pipe") form specifies a list of steps to be executed sequentially. The inputs coming into ,(code "pipe") are passed into the first step. Thereafter, the outputs of each step are passed as inputs into the next. Note that this has nothing to do with the Unix pipe. The inputs/outputs passed between steps are general CWL inputs/outputs. They need not be the standard stdin and stdout streams.]) (image :file "doc/decompress-compile-run.png") (p [Writing this worklow to ,(file "decompress-compile-run.scm"), compiling and running it with the compressed C source file ,(file "hello.c.gz") gives us the following output.]) (prog :line #f (source :file "doc/decompress-compile-run.out")) (p [The steps run in succession, and the stdout of the compiled executable is in ,(file "run-output.txt"). Success!])) (subsection :title [tee] (p [Next, the tee topology. The following workflow computes three different checksums of a given input file.]) (scheme-source "doc/checksum.scm") (p [Notice the ,(source-ref "ccwl/ccwl.scm" "\\(\\(tee" (code "tee")) form in the body of the workflow. The ,(code "tee") form specifies a list of steps that are independent of each other. The inputs coming into ,(code "tee") are passed into every step contained in the body of the ,(code "tee"). The outputs of each step are collected together and unioned as the output of the ,(code "tee").]) (image :file "doc/checksum.png") (p [Writing this workflow to ,(file "checksum.scm"), compiling and running it with some file ,(file "hello.txt") gives us the following output.]) (prog :line #f (source :file "doc/checksum.out")) (p [The MD5, SHA1 and SHA256 checksums are in the files ,(file "md5"), ,(file "sha1") and ,(file "sha256") respectively.]))) (section :title [Let’s write a spell check workflow] :ident "section-spell-check-workflow" (p [Finally, let’s put together a complex workflow to understand how everything fits together. The workflow we will be attempting is a spell check workflow inspired by the founders of Unix,(footnote ["UNIX: Making Computers Easier to Use" has a ,(ref :url "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvDZLjaCJuw?t=315" :text "section where Brian Kernighan writes a spell check system using pipes")]) and by dgsh,(footnote [dgsh, a shell supporting general directed graph pipelines, has a ,(ref :url "https://www.spinellis.gr/sw/dgsh/#spell-highlight" :text "spell check example").]). The workflow is pictured below. Let’s start by coding each of the steps required by the workflow.]) (image :file "doc/spell-check.png") (p [The first command, ,(code "split-words"), splits up the input text into words, one per line. It does this by invoking the ,(command "tr") command to replace anything that is not an alphabetic character with a newline. In addition, it uses the ,(code "--squeeze-repeats") flag to prevent blank lines from appearing in its output. Notice that no type is specified for the input ,(code "text"). When no type is specified, ccwl assumes a ,(code "File") type.] (scheme-source-form "doc/spell-check.scm" "\\(define split-words")) (p [We want our spell check to be case-insensitive. So, we downcase all words. This is achieved using another invocation of the ,(command "tr") command.] (scheme-source-form "doc/spell-check.scm" "\\(define downcase")) (p [For easy comparison against a dictionary, we want both our words and our dictionary sorted and deduplicated. We achieve this by invoking the ,(command "sort") command with the ,(code "--unique") flag.] (scheme-source-form "doc/spell-check.scm" "\\(define sort")) (p [Finally, we compare the sorted word list with the sorted dictionary to identify the misspellings. We do this using the ,(command "comm") command.] (scheme-source-form "doc/spell-check.scm" "\\(define find-misspellings")) (p [Now, let’s wire up the workflow. First, we assemble the ,(code "split-words")-,(code "downcase")-,(code "sort-words") arm of the workflow. This arm is just a linear chain that can be assembled using ,(code "pipe"). We will need to invoke the ,(code "sort") command twice in our workflow. To distinguish the two invocations, CWL requires us to specify a unique step id for each invocation. We do this using the second element, ,(code "(sort-words)"). To avoid name conflicts, we also need to rename the output of the ,(code "sort") command. The last step, ,(source-ref "ccwl/ccwl.scm" "\\(\\(rename new-key old-key\\)" (code "rename")), a special ccwl construct that, is used to achieve this. In this case, it renames the ,(code "sorted") output of the ,(code "sort") command into ,(code "sorted-words").] (scheme-source "doc/spell-check-workflow-1.scm")) (p [Next, we assemble the ,(code "split-dictionary") arm of the workflow. This arm is just a single step. Then, we connect up both the arms using a ,(code "tee"). Here too, we have a step id and renaming of intermediate inputs/outputs.] (scheme-source "doc/spell-check-workflow-2.scm")) (p [And finally, we use the outputs of both the arms of the workflow together in the ,(code "find-misspellings") step.] (scheme-source-form "doc/spell-check.scm" "\\(workflow")) (p [The complete workflow is as follows.] (scheme-source "doc/spell-check.scm")) (p [When compiled and run with a text file and a dictionary, the misspelt words appear at the output.] (prog :line #f (source :file "doc/spell-check.out"))))) (chapter :title [Cookbook] :ident "chapter-cookbook" (section :title [Stage input files] :ident "section-stage-input-files" (p [When running command-line tools, CWL normally has separate directories for input and output files. But, some command-line tools expect their input and output files to be in the same directory, and this may not sit well with them. In such situations, we can tell CWL to ,(emph "stage") the input file into the output directory. We may express this in ccwl using the ,(code "#:stage?") parameter to the inputs to be staged. Here is a rather concocted example.] (scheme-source "doc/staging-input-files.scm"))) (section :title [Pass in arbitrary CWL Requirements] :ident "section-pass-in-arbitrary-cwl-requirements" (p [Sometimes it is necessary to pass in arbitrary CWL Requirments that are not explicitly supported by ccwl. You can do this using the ,(code "#:requirements") parameter. The ,(code "#:requirements") parameter must be a scheme tree that is serializable to YAML (to put it more bluntly, a tree that ,(ref :url "https://github.com/mwette/guile-libyaml/" :text "guile-libyaml") will accept). Here are a couple of examples passing in an ,(code "InlineJavascriptRequirement") and a ,(code "ResourceRequirement") respectively.] (scheme-source "doc/inline-javascript-requirement.scm") (scheme-source "doc/resource-requirement.scm"))) (section :title [Prefix arguments] :ident "section-prefix-arguments" (p [You want to be able to associate arguments of a command to a prefix. For example, in the following example, we associate the input ,(code "output_filename") to the prefix ,(code "-o"). Notice the parentheses around ,(code "-o output_filename").] (scheme-source "doc/prefix-arguments.scm"))) (section :title [Array types] :ident "section-array-types" (p [ccwl supports array types using the following syntax.] (scheme-source "doc/array-types.scm")) (p [Nested array types are also supported.] (scheme-source "doc/nested-array-types.scm"))) (section :title [Array input item separators] :ident "section-array-input-item-separators" (p [Occasionally, it is required to serialize array type inputs by separating them with a specific item separator. This can be achieved by explicitly specifying a separator in the ,(code [#:run]) argument of ,(code [command]). For example, to use comma as the item separator, you could do] (scheme-source "doc/array-input-item-separators.scm") [If ,(code "[foo, bar, aal, vel]") is passed in as ,(code [messages]), then the command invoked is ,(samp "echo foo,bar,aal,vel").])) (section :title [Scatter/gather] :ident "section-scatter-gather" (p [ccwl supports CWL’s dotproduct scatter/gather feature using the following syntax. Here, the ,(code [other-messages]) input to the workflow is an array of strings that is scattered over the ,(code [print]) step. Each run of the ,(code [print]) step gets an element of ,(code [other-messages]) as its ,(code [other-message]) argument.] (scheme-source "doc/scatter-gather.scm"))) (section :title [Reuse external CWL workflows] :ident "section-reuse-external-cwl-workflows" (p [Even though you may be a ccwl convert (hurrah!), others may not be. And, you might have to work with CWL workflows written by others. ccwl permits easy reuse of external CWL workflows, and free mixing with ccwl commands. Here is a workflow to find the string length of a message, where one of the commands, ,(code "echo"), is defined as an external CWL workflow. External CWL workflows are referenced in ccwl using ,(code "cwl-workflow"). The identifiers and types of the inputs/outputs are read from the YAML specification of the external CWL workflow.] (scheme-source "doc/external-cwl-workflow.scm") [,(file "echo.cwl") is defined as] ;; TODO: Syntax highlight doc/external-cwl-workflow.cwl. (prog :line #f (source :file "doc/echo.cwl")))) (section :title [The ,(code [identity]) construct] :ident "identity-construct" (p [Sometimes, it is helpful for a step to simply copy all input keys forward to the output. This is what the ,(code [identity]) construct is for. An example follows.] (scheme-source "doc/identity-construct.scm") (image :file "doc/identity-construct.png"))) (section :title [Javascript expressions via ExpressionTool] :ident "javascript-expressions-via-expressiontool" (p [ccwl supports CWL’s ,(samp "ExpressionTool") using its ,(code "js-expression") construct. The ,(code "js-expression") construct may be invoked from within workflows just like ,(code "command") constructs can be. Here’s a workflow that uses ,(code "js-expression") to construct an array of numbers from ,(code "0") to ,(code "n-1").] (scheme-source "doc/js-expression-iota.scm")))) (chapter :title [Guide to the source code] :ident "chapter-guide-to-the-source-code" (p [This chapter is a guide to reading, understanding and hacking on the ccwl source code. You do not need to read this chapter to merely use ccwl to write your workflows. You only need to read this if you wish to understand and maybe improve the implementation of ccwl.]) (section :title [Important objects and functions] :ident "section-important-objects-and-functions" (p [As described in the ,(ref :ident "section-important-concepts" :text [Important Concepts]) section, ccwl is a statically typed expression oriented language in which functions take one or more arguments (either positional or named) and return one or more outputs. There are different kinds of functions—namely commands, javascript expressions, workflows and external CWL workflows. These are represented by ,(source-ref "ccwl/ccwl.scm" "\\(define-immutable-record-type " (code [])), ,(source-ref "ccwl/ccwl.scm" "\\(define-immutable-record-type " (code [])), ,(source-ref "ccwl/ccwl.scm" "\\(define-immutable-record-type " (code [])) and ,(source-ref "ccwl/ccwl.scm" "\\(define-immutable-record-type " (code [])) objects respectively. Inputs and outputs of these functions are represented by ,(source-ref "ccwl/ccwl.scm" "\\(define-immutable-record-type " (code [])) and ,(source-ref "ccwl/ccwl.scm" "\\(define-immutable-record-type " (code [])) objects respectively. Special macros— ,(source-ref "ccwl/ccwl.scm" "\\(define-syntax command" (code [command])), ,(source-ref "ccwl/ccwl.scm" "\\(define-syntax js-expression" (code [js-expression])), ,(source-ref "ccwl/ccwl.scm" "\\(define-syntax workflow" (code [workflow])) and ,(source-ref "ccwl/ccwl.scm" "\\(define-syntax cwl-workflow" (code [cwl-workflow])) are provided to define ,(code []), ,(code []), ,(code []) and ,(code []) objects respectively. These macros provide syntax validation and present a more concise interface to users. ,(code []) and ,(code []) objects are never defined on their own by the user, but rather are inferred by the aforementioned macros.]) (p [ccwl introduces the notion of a ,(source-ref "ccwl/ccwl.scm" "\\(define-immutable-record-type " (code [])) that is a generalization of ,(code []) and ,(code []) objects. Keys flow through workflow steps and string them together. Keys in the ccwl DSL are analogous to variable names in a regular programming language. The ,(source-ref "ccwl/ccwl.scm" "\\(define \\(collect-steps" (code [collect-steps])) function traverses workflow expression trees and produces a list of CWL steps. ccwl constructs such as ,(code [pipe]), ,(code [tee]), ,(code [identity]), ,(code [rename]), ,(code [scatter]), etc. are implemented in the collect-steps function.])) (section :title [Source tree organization] :ident "section-source-tree-organization" (p [Here’s a short summary of what some important files in the source tree contain.] (description (item :key (file "ccwl/ccwl.scm") [Core functionality—the functions, keys, input/output objects, etc.— of the ccwl DSL]) (item :key [,(file "ccwl/cwl.scm") and ,(file "ccwl/graphviz.scm")] [Serialization concerns to CWL and dot respectively]) (item :key (file "ccwl/yaml.scm") [Library to serialize scheme trees to YAML in the manner of guile-json to JSON]) (item :key (file "ccwl/ui.scm") [Command-line reporting of errors in the context of the user’s workflow description])))) (section :title [Contributing] :ident "section-contributing" (p [ccwl is developed on GitHub at ,(ref :url "https://github.com/arunisaac/ccwl"). Feedback, suggestions, feature requests, bug reports and pull requests are all welcome. Unclear and unspecific error messages are considered a bug. Do report them!]))))