sbatch: assert types to avoid silent parse errors

NOISE

@@ -120,5 +120,18 @@ ABSTRACT
   we build within Nix, they will be copied with the current data and 
   consequently not updated during the Nix compilation process.
 
+1.9 Sbatch silently fails on parsing
+
+  When submitting a job with a wrong specification in MN4 with SLURM 
+  17.11.9-2, for example this bogus line:
+    
+    #SBATCH --nodes=1 2
+
+  It silently fails to parse the options, falling back to the defaults, 
+  without any error.
+
+  We have improved our checking to detect bogus options passed to SLURM, 
+  so we prevent this problem from happening.
+
 /* vim: set ts=2 sw=2 tw=72 fo=watqc expandtab spell autoindent: */
 

garlic/stages/sbatch.nix

@@ -22,7 +22,6 @@
 , time ? null
 , output ? "stdout.log"
 , error ? "stderr.log"
-, contiguous ? null
 , extra ? null
 , acctgFreq ? null
 }:
@@ -30,6 +29,24 @@
 with stdenv.lib;
 with garlicTools;
 
+# sbatch fails silently if we pass garbage, so we assert the types here to avoid
+# sending `nodes = [ 1 2 ]` by mistake.
+assert (jobName != null) -> isString jobName;
+assert (chdir != null) -> isString chdir;
+assert (nixPrefix != null) -> isString nixPrefix;
+assert (ntasks != null) -> isInt ntasks;
+assert (ntasksPerNode != null) -> isInt ntasksPerNode;
+assert (ntasksPerSocket != null) -> isInt ntasksPerSocket;
+assert (cpusPerTask != null) -> isInt cpusPerTask;
+assert (nodes != null) -> isInt nodes;
+assert (exclusive != null) -> isBool exclusive;
+assert (qos != null) -> isString qos;
+assert (reservation != null) -> isString reservation;
+assert (time != null) -> isString time;
+assert (output != null) -> isString output;
+assert (error != null) -> isString error;
+assert (extra != null) -> isString extra;
+
 let
 
   sbatchOpt = name: value: optionalString (value!=null)