Retrying celery failed tasks that are part of a chain

Question

I have a celery chain that runs some tasks. Each of the tasks can fail and be retried. Please see below for a quick example:

Answer 1

You've found a bug :)

Fixed in https://github.com/celery/celery/commit/b2b9d922fdaed5571cf685249bdc46f28acacde3 will be part of 3.0.4.

Answer 2

I'm also interested in understanding why chains do not work with failed tasks.

I dig some celery code and what I've found so far is:

The implementation happends at app.builtins.py

@shared_task
def add_chain_task(app):
    from celery.canvas import chord, group, maybe_subtask
    _app = app

    class Chain(app.Task):
        app = _app
        name = 'celery.chain'
        accept_magic_kwargs = False

        def prepare_steps(self, args, tasks):
            steps = deque(tasks)
            next_step = prev_task = prev_res = None
            tasks, results = [], []
            i = 0
            while steps:
                # First task get partial args from chain.
                task = maybe_subtask(steps.popleft())
                task = task.clone() if i else task.clone(args)
                i += 1
                tid = task.options.get('task_id')
                if tid is None:
                    tid = task.options['task_id'] = uuid()
                res = task.type.AsyncResult(tid)

                # automatically upgrade group(..) | s to chord(group, s)
                if isinstance(task, group):
                    try:
                        next_step = steps.popleft()
                    except IndexError:
                        next_step = None
                if next_step is not None:
                    task = chord(task, body=next_step, task_id=tid)
                if prev_task:
                    # link previous task to this task.
                    prev_task.link(task)
                    # set the results parent attribute.
                    res.parent = prev_res

                results.append(res)
                tasks.append(task)
                prev_task, prev_res = task, res

            return tasks, results

        def apply_async(self, args=(), kwargs={}, group_id=None, chord=None,
                task_id=None, **options):
            if self.app.conf.CELERY_ALWAYS_EAGER:
                return self.apply(args, kwargs, **options)
            options.pop('publisher', None)
            tasks, results = self.prepare_steps(args, kwargs['tasks'])
            result = results[-1]
            if group_id:
                tasks[-1].set(group_id=group_id)
            if chord:
                tasks[-1].set(chord=chord)
            if task_id:
                tasks[-1].set(task_id=task_id)
                result = tasks[-1].type.AsyncResult(task_id)
            tasks[0].apply_async()
            return result

        def apply(self, args=(), kwargs={}, **options):
            tasks = [maybe_subtask(task).clone() for task in kwargs['tasks']]
            res = prev = None
            for task in tasks:
                res = task.apply((prev.get(), ) if prev else ())
                res.parent, prev = prev, res
            return res
    return Chain

You can see that at the end prepare_steps prev_task is linked to the next task. When the prev_task failed the next task is not called.

I'm testing with adding the link_error from prev task to the next:

if prev_task:
    # link and link_error previous task to this task.
    prev_task.link(task)
    prev_task.link_error(task)
    # set the results parent attribute.
    res.parent = prev_res

But then, the next task must take care of both cases (maybe, except when it's configured to be immutable, e.g. not accept more arguments).

I think chain can support that by allowing some syntax likes this:

c = chain(t1, (t2, t1e), (t3, t2e))

which means:

t1 link to t2 and link_error to t1e

t2 link to t3 and link_error to t2e