Hello,
parallel --version
GNU parallel 20130922
I think that parallel --retries doesn't work as it was intended to. Here is a simple testcase:
parallel -p -u -j 1 --retries 5 cat ::: some.file
When I run it while 'some.file' exists, it reads it content once and then parallel shuts down (which is ok, only one invocation, because the first one was successful). When I invoke it while there is no 'some.file' present, after the first iteration I get output "cat: some.file: No such file or directory" - which is exactly what I would expect. However, if in the meanwhile another process create "some.file" (during "parallel" command execution, but after the first failed invocation of 'cat'), during the next iteration I get desired output: the text present in the file, BUT the next iteration of cat is triggered as wel - it may result in 4 successful command invocation (cat in this example).
I would expect parallel to run given command up to N times (--retries N), but after the successful execution I would expect no more invocations. What am I doing wrong? Is it a bug? If so, will it be fixed?