CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythondebuggingserializationcontinuations
artemonster
artemonster

Reputation: 763

Loadable program checkpoints in python (serializable continuations/program images)

Lets say I have a python program that does following: 

do_some_long_data_crunching_computation()
call_some_fiddly_new_crashing_function()

Is there a way to "freeze" and serialize the state of python program (all globals and such) after the return point of first long computation and then re-iterate your development of new function and restart the program execution from this point?

This is somewhat possible, if you are running the program from the interpreter, but is there any other way?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 85

Answers (1)

Marcus Müller
Marcus Müller

Reputation: 36452

Well, no.

The point is that Python and your OS aren't free of side effects (it really isn't even remotely functional, though it has some features of functional languages), so to restore the state of your program doesn't really work in this case. You'd basically have to re-run the program, with exactly the computer state you had when you started it the last time.

Now, what you'd do is that after your long operation, you could save the state of the variables that are important to you, using pickle or similar.

Now, I know you'd like to avoid taking care of what to store and how to restore it, but that's basically a sign of unclean design: You should, as far as possible, store the state of your computation in a single state object; serializing and unserializing that then would be easy. Don't store computational state in globals!

Upvotes: 1

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