Plugin Architecture

[wookayin]

A new major feature: it'd be great to allow more programmatic and flexible customization through plugins.

Example applications

• This arbitrary information/metadata (e.g. docker container, slurm job, etc.) associated with running processes on GPU
• Custom formatting (see also Fully configurable output format #51, Config #151)
• Display additional information that are not necessarily pertaining to "GPU" stats (e.g. show CPU/RAM stats in addition)

(The following are subject to change and be updated)

Design

Similar to pytest's plugin architecture, which is a great example of modular plugin architecture design.

• Plugins can be third-party modules (pip-installable) outside gpustat core, or a local file (e.g., gpustat_conf.py, ~/.config/gpustat/gpustat_conf.py, similar to pytest's conftest.py)
  • Site-packages plugins are discovered through setuptools entry points: e.g., entry_points={"gpustat": ["gpustat-slurm = gpustat_slurm"]}
  • A side note: Recommend users to have "Framework :: gpustat" in the PyPI classifiers
• Plugins has priority.
  • Determines the order in which plugins (including core) will be executed in sequence.
  • Core plugins will be 0

Hooks and Plugin APIs

Two major categories are: data-related hooks and format-related hooks. Names are tentative.

Metadata:

• name: The name of the plugin.
• priority: The priority (execution order) of the plugin.

Data:

• add_options: Configure command-line ArgParser.
• configure: Called only once at the beginning of the program (no matter interactive or not).
• before_query: Called every time new_query() is used, after nvmlInit. Once in one-shot mode; Multiple times on interactive mode.
• query_device: Fill in the entry by querying each GPU device.
• get_process_info: Fill in the process entry by querying by PID. Heavy jobs are not recommended (use on_new_query instead).
• after_query: Called every time after all query is done (used for cleanup).

Formatting:

• repr_process: Tweak computing process representation to display
• repr_gpu: Tweak GPUStat.__repr__ (how it will be displayed)
• print_header: Prints additional information before GPU lines.
• print_footer: Prints additional information after GPU lines.

Etc.

Any comments or suggestions will be appreciated.