<html><head></head><body><div class="ydp7ce507fayahoo-style-wrap" style="font-family:Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size:13px;"><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><div><div class="ydp4867ab2msg-body ydp4867ab2P_wpofO ydp4867ab2mq_AS" data-test-id="message-view-body-content"><div class="ydp4867ab2jb_0 ydp4867ab2X_6MGW ydp4867ab2N_6Fd5"><div><div id="ydp4867ab2yiv5788772934"><div><div style="font-family:Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size:13px;" class="ydp4867ab2yiv5788772934yahoo-style-wrap"><div dir="ltr"><div>Hi —,<br><br>I have a question about a silent feature removal. It is about the <b>--dependency:expand</b> feature, that was present in Slurm for 10 years until its removal in version 21.08.03.<br><br>Until
Slurm 21.08.02, the expand option had an extensive documentation with
the dynamic job elasticity features, with resource shrinkage and
expansion options. You can see this in the archived FAQ: <a href="https://slurm.schedmd.com/archive/slurm-21.08.2/faq.html#job_size" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://slurm.schedmd.com/archive/slurm-21.08.2/faq.html#job_size</a><br><br>Just
a note that these features were added in Slurm 2.3 back in 2011, so it
was supported for nearly 10 years. For instance, see Slide 7 in <a href="https://slurm.schedmd.com/slurm_ug_2011/SLURM.v23.status.pdf" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://slurm.schedmd.com/slurm_ug_2011/SLURM.v23.status.pdf</a><br><br>However,
the expand option was silently removed from the Slurm documentation in
October 22nd 2021, few weeks before the release of Slurm 21.08.03: <a href="https://github.com/SchedMD/slurm/commit/11ce912f31519799494fde3140f530cfc8cfff6a" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://github.com/SchedMD/slurm/commit/11ce912f31519799494fde3140f530cfc8cfff6a</a><br><br>There
was no announcement as to why the feature was removed. As one can see
in the release notes for Slurm version 21.08.03 that happened in
November, 2021, nothing is really mentioned: <a href="https://lists.schedmd.com/pipermail/slurm-announce/2021/000066.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://lists.schedmd.com/pipermail/slurm-announce/2021/000066.html</a><br><br>Today, one can still dynamically “shrink” a job though: <a href="https://slurm.schedmd.com/faq.html#job_size" class="ydp4867ab2yiv5788772934" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://slurm.schedmd.com/faq.html#job_size</a><br><br>My
question is: why was the feature removed? What were the conceptual and
technical issues that made not supporting this feature an option?<br><br>I
can understand why properly expanding a job may be tricky, and why
shrinking it is not. Specially with queued jobs that may be waiting.
However, having jobs to wait more, or less, is a well known expectation
in HPC cluster. I thought a clearer reasoning as of why the feature was
removed would be worth learning about. <br><br>Thank you,<br><br>/Abel</div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="ydp4867ab2jb_0 ydp4867ab2X_6MGW ydp4867ab2N_6Fd5"></div><span class="ydp4867ab2em_N ydp4867ab2en_N"></span></div></div></div></body></html>