New field: Set Nextflow version
planned
Phil Ewels
At the moment if you want to fix a Nextflow version, you have to use a pre-run script to export the
NXF_VER
environment version. This is fine, but it's not intuitive for what is a fairly central part of the experience of running Nextflow on Seqera Platform.Suggestion is to have a new field in the UI to set the Nextflow version when launching a workflow.
The field should default to using the latest stable release of Nextflow, but give the option of using the latest edge release instead, or a specified exact release version.
M
Michael Tansini
marked this post as
planned
Rob Newman
Merged in a post:
Direct Version Management in Parameters
C
Canny AI
I would like to set the Nextflow version directly in a parameter without having to use a prerun script.
C
Charcoal Mandrill
I was just about to write this exact ticket... this issue has come up so many times! Especially when we have some users who want their pipelines to use new features like "topic channels" that are only supported in specific Nextflow versions, or the reverse where users are trying to debug a pipeline and want to roll back to an older known Nextflow version. Currently its very difficult to tell every user to copy/paste into the Pre-Run Script because we already have our Seqera Platform CE's pre-configured to utilize that with our own organization specific settings so they risk messing up the other settings we already have set up to do this. Also its not clear the order of precedence if they modify the Pre-Run Script for a single run vs. modify it for a pipeline in the LaunchPad vs. having a pre-defined Pre-Run Script on the Compute Environment. So ultimately it would be nice if it could just be defined somewhere else. Even more confusing, users notice that in the nextflow.config some pipelines have a "Nextflow version" set but it seems like that does not actually change the Nextflow version used either!
Rob Newman
marked this post as
evaluating
N
Neon carrot Goldfish
I ran into this issue when a workflow I hadn't run since last year failed on the current nextflow version. Setting the workflow to a previous nextflow version fixed the problem.
I'd vote for this being a part of the workflow configuration rather than the compute environment, maybe under "advanced settings".
If it isn't too much work, then there could be a slider set to "latest". If it is unset, then the field would be a dropdown with valid selections
Rob Newman
marked this post as
acknowledged
Adam Talbot
As an additional benefit, it makes it clear the platform is compatible with more than 1 version of Nextflow. Currently, the UX implies you must use the 'matching' version and anything else is a hacky workaround, which isn't the case.