Pueue is a command-line task management tool for sequential and parallel execution of long-running tasks.
Simply put, it's a tool that processes a queue of shell commands. On top of that, there are a lot of convenience features and abstractions.
Since Pueue is not bound to any terminal, you can control your tasks from any terminal on the same machine. The queue will be continuously processed, even if you no longer have any active ssh session.
It provides functionality for: - Scheduling commands that will be executed in their respective working directories - Easy output inspection. - Interaction with running processes - Pause/Resume resume tasks, when you need some processing power right NOW! - Manipulation of the scheduled task order - Running multiple tasks at once (You can decide how many concurrent tasks you want to run) - Grouping tasks. Each group acts as their own queue and can have several tasks running in parallel. - A callback hook to, for instance, set up desktop notifications. - Works on Linux, MacOS and partially on Windows.
Disclaimer: Windows isn't fully supported yet. This means:
- Pausing/resuming commands doesn't work for now.
- Pueue only supports powershell for executing commands, keep this in mind when writing commands.
Imagine having to unpack or move large amounts of data to various directories. Usually something like this ends with about 10 open terminals/tmux sessions and an over-challenged hard drive.
A similar scenario would occur, if you want to, for instance, re-encode 10 movies and each re-encode takes 12 hours.
Creating a chained command with 10 && isn't ergonomic at all and running 10 re-encodes in parallel will break your CPU.
Pueue is specifically designed for these situations.
You can schedule your task and continue on the same shell without waiting. You can specify how many tasks should run in parallel and even group tasks to maximize system resource utilization. You could log off your server and come back later to check on your tasks' progress.
Heck, you can even set up desktop notifications to get notified or execute parameterized commands as soon as a tasks finishes.
A few possible applications:
- Copying huge amounts of stuff
- Compression tasks
- Movie encoding
- rsync tasks
- Anything that takes longer than 5 minutes
Pueue made at least my life a lot easier on many occasions.
If you like the project, feel free to give it at try!
If you feel like something is missing, please create an issue :).
PRs are of course very welcome!
There are three different ways to install Pueue.
Package Manager
Use your system's package manager.
This will usually deploy service files and completions automatically.
Pueue has been packaged for:
yay -S pueue. Via Cargo
You'll need Rust version >=1.39
cargo install pueue
This will install pueue to ~/.cargo/bin/pueue
From Source
You'll need Rust version >=1.39
git clone git@github.com:Nukesor/pueue
cd pueue
cargo install --path .
This will install pueue to ~/.cargo/bin/pueue
Just run pueued anywhere on your commandline. It'll exit if you close the terminal, though.
To fork pueued into the background, add the -d or --daemonize flag. E.g. pueued -d. \
The daemon can be then shut down using the client: pueue shutdown
If you use Systemd and don't install Pueue with a package manager, place pueued.service in /etc/systemd/user/.
Afterward, every user can start/enable their own session with:
systemctl --user start pueued.service
systemctl --user enable pueued.service
Adding Commands:
To add a command just write: pueue add sleep 60\
If you want to add flags to the command, you can either:
- add -- => pueue add -- ls -al
- surround the command with a string pueue add 'ls -al'
The command will then be added and scheduled for execution, as if you executed it right now and then.
For normal operation it's recommended to add an alias to your shell's rc.\
E.g.: alias pad='pueue add --'
Surrounding a command with quotes is also required, if your command contains escaped characters.\
For instance pueue add ls /tmp/long\ path will result in the execution of sh -c ls /tmp/long path, which will then break, as the escaped space is not passed to Pueue.
See what's going on:
To get the status of currently running commands, just type pueue status.
To look at the output of a finished command use pueue log or pueue log $task_id.
If you want to see output of a running command use git show $task_id.
You can also use the -f and -e flag to get a live view of the output.
Pitfalls:
To avoid common pitfalls, please read the FAQ Section.
There is a help option (-h) for all commands. ``` Pueue client 0.4.0 Arne Beer contact@arne.beer Interact with the Pueue daemon
USAGE:
pueue [FLAGS] [OPTIONS]
FLAGS: -h, --help Prints help information -V, --version Prints version information -v, --verbose Verbose mode (-v, -vv, -vvv)
OPTIONS:
-p, --port
SUBCOMMANDS:
add Enqueue a task for execution
clean Remove all finished tasks from the list (also clears logs)
completions Generates shell completion files. Ingore for normal operations
edit Edit the command or the path of a stashed or queued task
enqueue Enqueue stashed tasks. They'll be handled normally afterwards
help Prints this message or the help of the given subcommand(s)
kill Kill either all or only specific running tasks
log Display the log output of finished tasks
parallel Set the amount of allowed parallel tasks
pause Pause the daemon and all running tasks. A paused daemon won't start any new tasks. Daemon and
tasks can be continued with start Can also be used to pause specific tasks
remove Remove tasks from the list. Running or paused tasks need to be killed first
reset Kill all running tasks, remove all tasks and reset max_id
restart Enqueue tasks again
send Send something to a task. Useful for sending confirmations ('y\n')
show Show the output of a currently running task This command allows following (like tail -f)
shutdown Remotely shut down the daemon. Should only be used if the daemon isn't started by a service
manager
start Wake the daemon from its paused state and continue all paused tasks. Can be used to resume or
start specific tasks
stash Stashed tasks won't be automatically started. Either enqueue them, to be normally handled or
explicitly start them
status Display the current status of all tasks
switch Switches the queue position of two commands. Only works on queued and stashed commands
```
The configuration file of Pueue is located in ~/.config/pueue.yml.
The default will be generated after starting pueue once.
client: daemonport: "6924" secret: "yoursecret" readlocallogs: true
daemon:
pueuedirectory: /home/$USER/.local/share/pueue
defaultparalleltasks: 1
pauseonfailure: false
port: "6924"
secret: "yoursecret"
``
**Client**:
-daemonportThe port the client tries to connect to.
-secretThe secret, that's used for authentication
-readlocal_logs` If the client runs as the same user (and on the same machine) as the daemon, logs don't have to be sent via the socket but rather read directly.
Daemon:
- pueue_directory The location Pueue uses for its intermediate files and logs.
- default_parallel_tasks Determines how many tasks should be processed concurrently.
- pause_on_failure If set to true, the daemon stops starting new task as soon as a single task fails. Already running tasks will continue.
- port The port the daemon should listen to.
- secret The secret, that's used for authentication
All logs can be found in ${pueue_directory}/logs.
Logs of previous Pueue sessions will be created whenever you issue a reset or clean.
In case the daemon fails or something goes wrong, the daemon will print to stdout/stderr.
If the daemon crashes or something goes wrong, please set the debug level to -vvvv and create an issue with the log!
If you want to dig right into it, you can compile and run it yourself with a debug build. This would help me a lot!
Grouping tasks can be useful, whenever your tasks utilize different system resources.
A possible scenario would be to have an io group for tasks that copy large files, while your cpu-heavy (e.g. reencoding) tasks are in a cpu group.
The parallelism setting of io could then be set to 1 and cpu be set to 2.
As a result, there'll always be a single task that copies stuff, while two tasks try to utilize your cpu as good as possible.
This removes the problem of scheduling tasks in a way that the system might get slow. At the same time, you're able to maximize resource utilization.
You can specify a callback that will be called every time a task finishes. The callback can be parameterized with some variables.
These are the available variables that can be used to create a command:
- {{ id }}
- {{ command }}
- {{ path }}
- {{ result }} (Success, Killed, etc.)
- {{ group }}
Example callback:
callback: "notify-send \"Task {{ id }}\nCommand: {{ command }}\nPath: {{ path }}\nFinished with status '{{ result }}'\""
Shell completion files can be created on the fly with pueue completions $shell $directory.
There's also a build_completions.sh script, which creates all completion files in the utiles/completions directory.
The Pueue client status and log commands support JSON output with the -j flag.
This can be used to easily incorporate it into window manager bars, such as i3bar.
When calling pueue commands in a script, you might need to sleep for a short amount of time for now. The pueue server processes requests asynchronously, whilst the TaskManager runs it's own update loop with a small sleep. (The TaskManager handles everything related to starting, stopping and communicating with processes.)
A sleep in scripts will probably become irrelevant, as soon as this bug in rust-lang is fixed: https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/39364
Copyright © 2019 Arne Beer (@Nukesor)