I have several python-scripts where I need to edit the header for documentation and copyright statements. The code itself does not change, but I guess Renku will see that the file changed and will want to update the output files. Is there a way to avoid this? So I don’t have to re-run all the workflows?
No, renku has no way of distinguishing between a functional and non-functional change in a script file, to renku it’s all just modified input files.
That said, you’re not required to update outdated outputs, you can just selectively update outputs with renku update <output> as needed, when something actually changes. Then you don’t need to do it all at once.
Actually, it could be a useful feature to have the ability to tag changes to files as “non-functional”, i.e. not affecting any children in the KG. This would reduce confusion, as even if the user knows that a change (e.g. documentation string in a script file) is without effect during the time of the change, other users and even the user himself after some time, will not remember, and only see that everything is outdated. The use case here is that we need to add license information in the headers of all code files, but then the whole project will become outdated and renku status will become useless (due to clutter) until the whole project has been re-evaluated, which would take a lot of time and wasted computational time.