Makefile: : Parallel Dependency Specification Language

Some processes are not easy to be programmed from scratch for parallel machines (clusters), but can be easily split on simple steps. Makefile::Parallel is a tool which lets users specify how processes depend on each other. The language syntax resembles the well known Makefile[1] format, but instead of specifying files or targets dependencies, Makefile::Parallel specifies processes (or jobs) dependencies. The scheduler reads the specification and submits jobs to the cluster scheduler (in our case, Rocks PBS) waiting them to end. When each process finishes, dependencies are calculated and direct dependent jobs are submitted. Makefile::Parallel language includes features to specify parametric rules, used to split and join processes dependencies: some tasks can be split into smaller jobs working on different portions of files, and at the end, another process can be used to join results.