.. _usage:

Usage
=====

Run Noodles
-----------

.. code-block:: bash

   noodles <command_type> <path_to_spec>

Noodles only uses one command type and one spec file at a time. The command
type is simply a key in the spec file to serve for different purposes.

.. _choose_only_some_experiments:

Choose Only Some Experiments
----------------------------

Noodles can run only some experiments when a filter string is specified as
follows:

.. code-block:: bash

   noodles <command_type> <path_to_spec>:<filter_experiments>

``<filter_experiments>`` is a comma-separated string composed of experiment
names. For example, the command would be like this when we only want to run
experiments *exp1* and *exp3*:

.. code-block:: bash

   noodles run spec.yaml:exp1,exp3

.. _command_types:

Command Types
-------------

We may need different command types for the same experiment, for example, we
may need to run and stop the same experiment. We should write different
commands under two keys ``run`` and ``stop`` in the spec file.

Then we can run the experiments like this:

.. code-block:: bash

   noodles run spec.yml
   ...
   noodles stop spec.yml

Spec File
---------

The spec file should be written in YAML_. We'll introduce the how write a
minimalist spec file in the next topic :ref:`write_a_minimalist_spec_file`.

Debug
-----

If something didn't go as expected, Noodles provides extra arguments to provide
verbose and debugging messages, including how the commands are executed and
what environment variables are given.

Add two extra arguments like this:

.. code-block:: bash

   noodles run spec.yml --verbose --debug

.. _YAML: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YAML