Ensure teardown doesn't run until all other tasks complete

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Hi all,

I'm encountering an issue with the setup and teardown feature in Airflow, which I believe is related to this issue. When executing a DAG with the provided setup script, the teardown task does not wait for dependent tasks to finish before executing. Specifically, if I clear task t1 while task t3 has any of the following statuses: finished, failed, or upstream_failed, the teardown task executes immediately without waiting for t1 to complete.

Steps to Reproduce:

Execute the provided DAG setup script.
Clear task t1 while task t3 has one of the mentioned statuses (finished, failed, upstream_failed).
Observe the behavior of the teardown task.
Expected Behavior:
The teardown task should wait until all dependent tasks, including t1, have completed before executing.

Actual Behavior:
The teardown task executes immediately after clearing t1, regardless of the status of task t3.

Setup Script:

default_args = {
    "owner": "me",
    "start_date": "2024-04-03",
    "retries": 3,
    "retry_delay": timedelta(minutes=1),
}


with DAG(
    "GDP_T_est",
    default_args=default_args,
    max_active_runs=1,
    catchup=False,
) as dag:
    setup = BashOperator(
        task_id="setup",
        bash_command="""echo "starting" && sleep 5 && echo "done" """,
    )

    t1 = BashOperator(
        task_id="t1",
        bash_command="""echo "t1 starting" && sleep 10 && echo "done" """, 
    )

    t2 = BashOperator(
        task_id="t2",
        bash_command="""echo "t2 starting" && sleep 5 && echo "done" """,
    )

    t3 = BashOperator(
        task_id="t3",
        bash_command="""echo "t3 starting" && sleep 5 && echo "done" """,
    )

    teardown = BashOperator(
        task_id="teardown",
        bash_command="""echo "finishing" && sleep 5 && echo "done" """, 
    )

    (setup >> t1 >> t2 >> t3 >> teardown.as_teardown(setups=setup))

Additional Information:

Airflow Version: 2.7.1
I'm using the airflow image: apache/airflow:2.7.1

Video:

airflow-setup-teardown-error.mov

Is this an expected behavior for this feature at the moment?

It seems problematic, specially when using dbt with cosmos, and we end up having the teardown of our cluster while some tasks are still running.

Can you please double-check the documentation in https://airflow.apache.org/docs/apache-airflow/stable/howto/setup-and-teardown.html#setup-and-teardown ? The setup task in your example is not marked as setup.

@jscheffl

Thank you @jscheffl, I modified the example with this other syntaxe:

    (setup.as_setup() >> t1 >> t2 >> t3 >> teardown.as_teardown())
    setup.as_setup() >> teardown.as_teardown()

But I see the same behavior. Which is expected since the syntaxes are equivalent 🤔

Could this actually be a bug?

Okay, I did a regression and can confirm this bug.

Note that the additional dependency from Setup >> Teardown is not needed. It is modelled automatically.
I used a modified example example_setup_teardown.py and added two normal tasks in the middle.

with DAG(
    dag_id="example_setup_teardown",
    start_date=pendulum.datetime(2021, 1, 1, tz="UTC"),
    catchup=False,
    tags=["example"],
) as dag:
    root_setup = BashOperator(task_id="root_setup", bash_command="echo 'Hello from root_setup'").as_setup()
    root_normal = BashOperator(task_id="normal", bash_command="echo 'I am just a normal task'")
    root_normal2 = BashOperator(task_id="normal2", bash_command="echo 'I am just a normal task'")
    root_normal3 = BashOperator(task_id="normal3", bash_command="echo 'I am just a normal task'")
    root_teardown = BashOperator(
        task_id="root_teardown", bash_command="echo 'Goodbye from root_teardown'"
    ).as_teardown(setups=root_setup)
    root_setup >> root_normal >> root_normal2 >> root_normal3 >> root_teardown

The error exactly appears if you clear a normal task between setup and teardown which is NOT the last task before teardown and select no downstream tasks. Means that the setup is executed, then the real cleared task. The bug is that the only direct pre-ceeding task before teardown is already finished such that for the scheduler it seems to be "ready for teardown". Scheduler does not check whether all tasks between setup and teardown are completed.

In the example above the error is generated if either task "normal" or "normal2" are cleared w/o downstream. It works as expected if "normal3" is cleared.
I made my regression on latest main after branching off 2.9.0rc2. So the problem most probably is in since the beginning.

looks like what we need to do is find all the tasks “in the scope” of the teardown

(and that is, those tasks that are in between the teardown and its setup(s))

and then just make sure they are not running.

one idea for fixing:

but, it would probably be more efficient if we did not hit that block unless the direct upstreams already passed

so another option would be to instead add something like this to the end

then it would only evaluate the indirect in-scope tasks are done if everything else passed.

(i'm missing an else in that screenshot to guarantee it's a teardown)

ideally perhaps, we would also be able to know that this run was the result of a clear and then don’t bother to run this check generally speaking!

@jscheffl

Hello guys! Is this still active or maybe it was forgotten or lost?
I face a similar bug on the new 2.10.5 version, but we even not need to restart any task. Seems that the example from docs here is not working in case that one of the paralleled tasks branches failed and it has a similar dependent task with the not yet executed task (worker-four on the screenshot). In that case the teardown will not wait not-yet-executed task end run
@jscheffl Do not you remember this issue? Should I open a new one?
Can provide a sample code if needed
Thank you

I failed at the time I raised a fix to make pytests working. As of other priorities I "gave-up". I think another issue is not needed but another fix attempt... if you like to contribute. If you like you can retry/attempt to follow the fix I attempted in #38788 which basically fixed the problem but I was unable to make all pytests happy.

@jscheffl

@jscheffl Thank you for the answer. I'll at least take a look, interested in how you have fixed it

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has been open for 365 days without any activity. There has been several Airflow releases since last activity on this issue. Kindly asking to recheck the report against latest Airflow version and let us know if the issue is reproducible. The issue will be closed in next 30 days if no further activity occurs from the issue author.

give another try to fix this in #64181

Fix teardown scope evaluation: lazy iteration, early return, better t…

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Ensure teardown doesn't run until all other tasks complete #29332

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Ensure teardown doesn't run until all other tasks complete #29332

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lorransr commented on Apr 3, 2024

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