Pre-Configure And Post-Install Plugins

Pre-configure plugins allow Cylc to take additional actions before running Cylc utilities such as cylc install, cylc graph and cylc config.

Post-install plugins allow Cylc to take additional actions after running cylc install.

Built In Plugins

Cylc Flow provides the following pre-configure and post-install plugins:

cylc.flow.install_plugins.log_vc_info

Record version control information to the workflow log directory on installation.

Developing `pre_configure` and `post_install` plugins

Cylc uses entry points registered by setuptools to search for pre-configure and post-install plugins.

Hello World

In this example a pre-configure plugin which logs a “Hello World” message and, after installation, logs some info about the installation:

my_plugin.py

from cylc.flow import LOG

def pre_configure(srcdir=None, opts=None, rundir=None):
    # write Hello to the Cylc log.
    LOG.info(f'Hello World')
    return {}

def post_install(srcdir=None, opts=None, rundir=None):
    LOG.info(f'installed from {srcdir}')
    LOG.info(f'installed to {rundir}')
    LOG.info(f'installation options were {options}')
    return {}

Plugins are registered by registering them with the cylc.pre_configure and cylc.post_install entry points:

setup.py

# plugins must be properly installed, in-place PYTHONPATH meddling will
# not work.

from setuptools import setup

setup(
    name='my-plugin',
    version='1.0',
    py_modules=['my_plugin'],
    entry_points={
        # register this plugin with Cylc
        'cylc.pre_configure': [
        # name = python.namespace.of.module
        'my_plugin=my_plugin.my_plugin:pre_configure'
        ]
        'cylc.post_install': [
        # name = python.namespace.of.module
        'my_plugin=my_plugin.my_plugin:post_install'
        ]
    }
)

API Reference

Cylc will pass following arguments to pre-configure and post-install plugins:

srcdir (Path or string): The directory from which cylc install is installing a workflow, or the directory passed to cylc validate, cylc graph and other CLI commands which work without installing a workflow.
opts (optparse.Values): CLI options set for a Cylc script.
rundir (Path or string): The destination of a cylc install or reinstall command.

The pre-configure plugin should return a dictionary which may contain the following keys:

env: A dictionary of environment variables to be exported to the scheduler environment.
template_variables: A dictionary of template variables to be used by Jinja2 when templating the workflow configuration files.
templating_detected: jinja2 to be used when templating. N.b: This will result in failure if the templating language set does not match the shebang line of the flow.cylc file.

The post-install entry point does not return any data used by Cylc.

More advanced example

See also

For the implementation of a more fully featured “real-world” example see Cylc Rose.

The example below looks for a file in the workflow source directory called template.json and activates if it exists.

At pre_configure template variables are extracted from a template.json file and provided to Cylc as both template and environment variables.

At post_install an additional log file is provided recording the version of this plugin used.

An example json reading plugin

import json
from pathlib import Path

VERSION = '0.0.1'

def pre_configure(srcdir=None, opts=None, rundir=None):
    # Look for a 'template.json' file in the srcdir and make template
    # variables from it available as jinja2.
    template_file = (Path(srcdir) / 'template.json')

    # Trigger the plugin if some condition is met:
    if (template_file).exists():
        # You could retrieve info from a file:
        template = json.loads(template_file.read_text())

        # You can add variables programmatically:
        template['plugin_set_var'] = str(__file__)

        # Return a dict:
        return {
            'env': template,
            'template_variables': template,
            'templating_detected': 'jinja2'
        }
    else:
        return {}

def post_install(srcdir=None, opts=None, rundir=None):
    # record plugin version in a file
    (Path(rundir) / 'log/json-plugin.info').write_text(
        f"Installed with Simple JSON reader plugin version {VERSION}\\n")
    return None