Interactive Usage¶

Note

The command-line options related to interactive usage have changed in StepUp 2.0.0

All previous tutorials have run StepUp non-interactively, for the sake of simplicity. In practice, this is mainly useful when building projects in batch jobs, e.g., in the cloud. When working on a project, interactive usage is more efficient and convenient, but requires a little more explanation.

The Static Glob tutorial is a good example to demonstrate the interactive use of StepUp. Running StepUp as follows will not exit the terminal user interface:

stepup -w

After the line PHASE │ watch appears, StepUp just waits for changes to the (static) files.

Change an Existing File¶

For example, while StepUp is still running, edit and save the file src/foo.txt. You will see at least the following:

    UPDATED │ src/foo.txt

Now go back to the terminal and press the character ? to display the supported keys with interactive commands:

───────────────────────────────────── Keys ─────────────────────────────────────

   r = run     q = shutdown     d = drain     j = join     g = graph

────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

Now press (lower case) r to run steps whose (indirect) inputs have changed. The new file src/foo.txt is copied again to dst/foo.txt, while other steps are ignored.

The interactive commands are described in detail in the Interactive Command Reference.

Add a New File That Matches `glob("src/*.txt")`¶

Create a new file src/spam.txt with content of your choice while StepUp is still running. You will see at least the following:

    UPDATED │ src/spam.txt

Now press (lower case) r again. The ./plan.py step is executed again because a new file has appeared that matches a glob pattern used in plan.py. Running ./plan.py again will, in turn, create a new step to copy src/spam.txt to dst/spam.txt.

Screen Recording¶

The following recording shows the terminal output when starting StepUp from scratch with two workers, changing src/foo.txt and re-running, followed by adding src/spam.txt and re-running:

Watch mode with automatic re-run¶

If you prefer to avoid switching back and forth between the terminal and the editor, you can use the -W option instead of -w. This will automatically re-run the steps half a second after the first file change:

stepup -W