Interoperability with cli_filter/user_defaults plugin

[jfolz]

Hello Pyxis people,

We're currently investigating how to reduce the amount of boilerplate our users have to deal with. Allowing them to set custom defaults in $HOME/.slurm/default which are picked up by the cli_filter/user_defaults plugin is an interesting option. Pyxis' arguments, mostly container-image and container-mounts, are great candidates here.

Unfortunately, the plugin only deals with standard Slurm arguments, not those added by SPANK plugins. After scanning slurm_opt_t, srun_opt_t etc. I came to the conclusion that plugin-specific arguments are simply not accessible there. They seem to be buried somewhere deep inside srun. The only possible point of interaction I see is through manipulation of the job environment (or potentially slurm_opt_t->spank_job_env, though I don't know what that actually does), i.e., cli_filter/user_defaults could be patched to add some Pyxis-specific env vars to hold the defaults.

So I guess I have two questions:

1. Did I overlook something, and this is actually very easy to achieve?
2. What are the chances that Pyxis might add support for reading arguments from env vars like PYXIS_CONTAINER_IMAGE?

ps: Don't hesitate to close this if you feel it's a silly request/outside your jurisdiction/...

[flx42]

Sorry for the delay!

What are the chances that Pyxis might add support for reading arguments from env vars like PYXIS_CONTAINER_IMAGE?

That seems totally reasonable, I will look into that when I have some cycles.