Add a local cluster option to execute on standard linux or mac machine

[ieee8023]

Keeping track of a hyperparameter search is much easier when using smart-dispatch. It would be nice to have the ability to launch jobs with the [] list notation locally without a cluster.

I don't see yet how to achieve this with at or crontab. There are some ways to do this with a simple bash script like this one: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6441509/how-to-write-a-process-pool-bash-shell

[ieee8023]

More options:

xargs or make http://coldattic.info/shvedsky/pro/blogs/a-foo-walks-into-a-bar/posts/7

at and batch: https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/3/html/System_Administration_Guide/s1-autotasks-at-batch.html

I think make is a good solution. It has a thread pool built in. Here is an example job makefile.

default: job1.log job2.log job3.log
job1.log:
	sh job.sh 1 > job1.log
job2.log:
	sh job.sh 2 > job2.log
job3.log:
	sh job.sh 3 > job3.log

• You can launch make it make -j 2 to have thread pool of size 2.
• It depends on the log files, so if a job has run it will not run again if you run the makefile again.
• The makefile can be generated as the submission script for a cluster.
• Make can be run using at so it is a background process on the machine and out of interactive mode.

[bouthilx]

@mgermain Does the Trello link mean you did some work on your side? We are considering this issue for a CCW ticket.

[mgermain]

Just removed the trello link. It was not related. No work has been done for local a local queue and I think there are more pressing issues even if this one would be relly nice to have.

[bouthilx]

Which issue would you consider more important? A student was asigned the slurm backend ticket. I though he could add support for graham and cedar afterwards, but meanwhile I would have given this ticket or one you find more important to another student.

[mgermain]

There are a lot of almost finish, small or low hanging fruit that we could finish before adding another backend which is a much more involved task.

ToFinish/Review/Merge PR

#156 - Add job dependency to autoresume feature
#157 - Don't use -V
#113 - Write Documentation
#42 - Add support for memory

Quick&Small

#140 - Add Coloss support
#96 - When msub failed to launch a job we should have some feedback

Important and overdue

#108 - Support custom queues
#62 - Add a ~/.smartdispatch config folder
#7 - Add more types of folded arguments