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Optional Features

Sacred offers a set of specialized features which are kept optional in order to keep the list of requirements small. This page provides a short description of these optional features.

Git Integration

If the experiment sources as maintained in a git repository, then Sacred can extract information about the current state of the repository. More specifically it will collect the following information, which is stored by the observers as part of the experiment info:

  • url: The url of the origin repository
  • commit: The SHA256 hash of the current commit
  • dirty: A boolean indicating if the repository is dirty, i.e. has uncommitted changes.

This can be especially useful together with the :ref:`cmdline_enforce_clean` (-e / --enforce_clean) commandline option. If this flag is used, the experiment immediately fails with an error if started on a dirty repository.

Note

Depends on the GitPython package. Install with pip install GitPython.

Optional Observers

MongoDB

An observer which stores run information in a MongoDB. For more information see :ref:`mongo_observer`.

Note

Requires the pymongo package. Install with pip install pymongo.

TinyDB

An observer which stores run information in a tinyDB. It can be seen as a local alternative for the MongoDB Observer. For more information see :ref:`tinydb_observer`.

Note

Requires the tinydb, tinydb-serialization, and hashfs packages. Install with pip install tinydb tinydb-serialization hashfs.

SQL

An observer that stores run information in a SQL database. For more information see :ref:`sql_observer`

Note

Requires the sqlalchemy package. Install with pip install sqlalchemy.

Template Rendering

The :ref:`file_observer` supports automatic report generation using the mako package.

Note

Requires the mako package. Install with pip install mako.

Numpy and Pandas Integration

If numpy or pandas are installed Sacred will automatically take care of a set of type conversions and other details to make working with these packages as smooth as possible. Normally you won't need to know about any details. But for some cases it might be useful to know what is happening. So here is a list of what Sacred will do:

  • automatically set the global numpy random seed (numpy.random.seed()).
  • if numpy is installed the :ref:`special value <special_values>` _rnd will be a numpy.random.RandomState instead of random.Random.
  • because of these two points having numpy installed actually changes the way randomness is handled. Therefore numpy is then automatically added to the dependencies of the experiment, irrespective of its usage in the code.
  • ignore typechanges in the configuration from numpy types to normal types, such as numpy.float32 to float.
  • convert basic numpy types in the configuration to normal types if possible. This includes converting numpy.array to list.
  • convert numpy.array, pandas.Series, pandas.DataFrame and pandas.Panel to json before storing them in the MongoDB. This includes instances in the :ref:`info_dict`.

YAML Format for Configurations

If the PyYAML package is installed Sacred automatically supports using config files in the yaml format (see :ref:`config_files`).

Note

Requires the PyYAML package. Install with pip install PyYAML.