The menu file and pymule batch

To avoid having to run dozens of jobs manually, McMule uses menu files. These files list all McMule jobs that need to be executed which is done by pymule. Currently pymule supports two executors: shell for running on a single machine and slurm for running on a SLURM cluster. To run a menu file, one either runs

pymule batch shell -np <number of cores> menu-m2enng.menu  # using shell executor

pymule batch slurm menu-m2enng.menu # using slurm executor as part of a SLURM script

Menu file syntax

Menu files use a DSL to minimise effort. Statements are separated by line breaks similar to python or bash. Blocks are indented, again similar to python. Variables are indicated with dollar signs, eg. $x

conf </path/to/config.toml>

loads the variables of a config file to use in the following runs. config file can be (partially) overridden with a second conf call

image <image name>

loads the docker image to run in

mode <mode>

sets the running mode of McMule. Currently only vegas is supported

user <path/to/user.so>

sets the measurement function to be executed

run <seed> <xic> <piece> [optional arguments..]

executes mcmule with the currently active variables for the specified which_piece.

let <var> = <val>

sets the variable var to the value val in all following commands. Note that var does not contain a dollar sign here

for <var> in <a> <b> <c>...

executes the body of this block with $var = a, $var = b, $var = c.

if <$var> <op> <value>

executes the body of this block only if the expression evaluates to true. valid operators are ==, <=, <, >, >=, and !=.

An example can be found in Listing

 let a = 3
 conf ../manual/example2/m2enng.toml
 mode vegas

 run $a 0.3 m2enng0 0

 for b in 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4
     run $a $b m2enngR 0
     if $b == 0.3
         run $a $b m2enngR 1

Configuration file

The config file is written using TOML and can be used to set arbitrary variables. However, most commonly used to set statistics and the name of the mcmule executable.