How to trigger next process on completion of previous process?

Question

Simple question but I am stumped. (I am still learning Nextflow)

I have a process which takes as input a channel of files and processes each file separately.

There is a second process which needs to wait until all files are complete, so it can merge the outputs into a single collated file.

How can I do this? I have tried subscribing to "onComplete" event to no avail as I cannot specify a process as the function to trigger.

files = Channel.from params.the_files_list

process process_files {

    input:
    val file_path from files

    output:
    stdout result

    """
    python ./process_one_file.py $file_path
    """
}

process merge_results {
    
    input:
    ????

    output:
    ????

    script:
    """
    echo "How to trigger this process once, after all individual files are processed?"
    """
        
}

??? Want to do something like this
result.subscribe onComplete: merge_results

```

Answer 1

So from this page... https://groups.google.com/g/nextflow/c/jt77_-uApMs

It is the "scatter-gather" pattern. I think the answer is to collect() the channel as follows - interested to hear if there is a better way

files = Channel.from params.the_files_list

process process_files {

    input:
    val file_path from files

    output:
    stdout result

    """
    python ./process_one_file.py $file_path
    """
}

process merge_results {
    
    input:
    val go from result.collect()

    script:
    """
    echo "Triggered once after all files complete!"
    """
        
}