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Does WDL support optional outputs? #394

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yfarjoun opened this issue Aug 5, 2020 · 4 comments
Closed

Does WDL support optional outputs? #394

yfarjoun opened this issue Aug 5, 2020 · 4 comments

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@yfarjoun
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yfarjoun commented Aug 5, 2020

I see the section about optional inputs...with lots of nice examples and explanations....but I do not see a similar section about optional outputs

https://github.com/openwdl/wdl/blob/main/versions/1.0/SPEC.md#outputs-section

womtool (at least) thinks that outputs can be marked as optional, but Cromwell doesn't support that....the spec is inconclusive...

where the spec does talk about Optional types, it seems very biased about "inputs": https://github.com/openwdl/wdl/blob/main/versions/1.0/SPEC.md#optional-parameters--type-constraints

Even though optional types can be used throughout a wdl script and not only in the input section.

I think it would be good if the spec were more consistent about Optional types, and ideally, make sure to have examples and wording that supports a parameter having an optional type in all stages of the script (workflow input, task input, workflow variable, task output, workflow output).

@DavyCats
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DavyCats commented Aug 6, 2020

If I'm not mistaken cromwell does support optional outputs, just not on certain backends.

In the development spec, the section on optional literals doesn't specifically mention inputs and there are examples of optionals being used outside of the input section (eg. in the conditionals section). There indeed don't appear to be any examples of optionals in the output sections. I'd agree that it might be good to add something there.

@yfarjoun
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yfarjoun commented Aug 6, 2020

true dat. but a different section says this: "A user does not need to specify a value for the parameter in order to satisfy all the inputs to the workflow."

@patmagee
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@yfarjoun have you seen t his? #310

@jdidion
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jdidion commented Feb 22, 2021

This is covered by the 1.1 spec.

@jdidion jdidion closed this as completed Feb 22, 2021
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