launchDir can not be set

[nttg8100]

Bug report

I want to resume the workflow launched by nextflow. It requires the launchDir where it will create the .nextflow folder and relative history. However, it can not be set via nextflow.config or the environment variable NXF_LAUNCHDIR

Expected behavior and actual behavior

Expected that if I can set it to allow resume when I launch the nextflow from different folder on a SLURM HPC.

Steps to reproduce the problem

The workflow example file

nextflow.enable.dsl=2
workflow {
    println "LaunchDir: ${workflow.launchDir}"
}

The command I ran

export NXF_LAUNCHDIR=/home/river/.river
nextflow run test.nf 

Expected output

LaunchDir: /home/river

Program output

LaunchDir: /home/river/.river

Environment

• Nextflow version: 24.10.6 and 25.04.2
• Java version: 11.0.3
• Operating system: Linux Ubuntu 22.04
• Bash version: GNU bash, version 5.0.17(1)-release (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)

Additional context

I want to run the nextflow pipeline on a SLURM HPC, while the I/O data is stored on an internal compatible S3. I can set the cloud cache to resume on the same folder where I launched the workflow but it failed when I changed to run on new folder. I tested on sequera cloud with AWS and saw the launchDir is set on root folder at "/". Is this feature support for awsbatch or any cloud executors only?

[nttg8100]

I think we can modify to allow the user to set this instead of getting the current working directory
https://github.com/nextflow-io/nextflow/blob/master/modules/nextflow/src/main/groovy/nextflow/script/WorkflowMetadata.groovy#L268C8-L268C51
Use case:

• Launch the pipeline on the local or cluster
• Cache and store inputs/outputs of the workflow runs by cloud

[bentsherman]

The launch directory is implicitly defined by wherever you launch the pipeline. It would not make sense to make it configurable. You can use NXF_CACHE_DIR to control the location of the metadata cache

https://nextflow.io/docs/latest/reference/env-vars.html

[nttg8100]

Thank you very much @bentsherman . It ran successfully. It seems the metadata cache can be set via the NXF_CACHE_DIR. I will close this issue.