I'm learning about semaphores in the Argo project workflows to avoid concurrent workflows using the same resource.

My use case is that I have several external resources which only one workflow can use one at a time. So far so good, but sometimes the resource needs some maintenance and during that period I don't want to Argo to start any workflow.

I guess I have two options:

• I tested manually setting the semaphore value in the configMap to the value 0, but Argo started one workflow anyway.
• I can start a workflow that runs forever, until it is deleted, claiming the synchronization lock, but that requires some extra overhead to have workflows running that don't do anything.

So I wonder how it is supposed to work if I set the semaphore value to 0, I think it should not start the workflow then since it says 0. Anyone have any info about this?

This is the steps I carried out:

1. First I apply my configmap with kubectl -f.
2. I then submit some workflows and since they all use the same semaphore Argo will start one and the rest will be executed in order one at a time.
3. I then change value of the semapore with kubectl edit configMap
4. Submit new job which then Argo will execute.

Perhaps Argo will not reload the configMap when I update the configMap through kubectl edit? I would like to update the configmap programatically in the future but used kubectl edit now for testing.