Question: Is there a way to have Caliper output a custom string with the built in configs?

[balos1]

I would like, for example, the runtime-report to print out a string containing a git version string for our library.

[daboehme]

Hi @balos1 ,

Currently that's not possible, but it is an interesting idea. We might be able to add that.

However, we have a C++ API that lets you write reports into a custom C++ stream, which might be a workaround. It requires MPI support. Here's an example:

https://software.llnl.gov/Caliper/ConfigManagerAPI.html#_CPPv4N4cali30make_collective_output_channelEPKc

Hope this helps!
-David

[balos1]

Thanks for the reply @daboehme.

The reasoning for wanting this: we would like to know exactly what version of our library was used when the report was generated. There are certainly ways we could work around this (I will take a look at the link), but it would be a very convenient feature if one could just set an environment variable like CALI_PKG_REVISION=$(git rev-parse HEAD) (or through a runtime API option) and have that string in the report.

[daboehme]

Ok, I'll try to come up with something.

[jrmadsen]

So just ran across this and, having done something like this myself, figured I'd shared what I think in the context of Caliper the solution could be: a metadata service (maybe enabled by default) which registers a bunch of (obviously) metadata at start-up and then there would a cali_add_metadata function that users can use to add their own metadata.

E.g. at start-up:

// uses strftime
auto _launch_date = get_local_datetime("%D", settings::get_launch_time());
auto _launch_time = get_local_datetime("%H:%M", settings::get_launch_time());
auto _cpu_info    = cpu::get_info();
auto _user        = get_env<std::string>("USER", "nobody");

for(auto&& itr : { "SHELL", "HOME", "PWD" })
{
    auto _var = get_env<std::string>(itr, "");
    if(!_var.empty())
        add_metadata(itr, _var);
}

add_metadata("USER", _user);
add_metadata("LAUNCH_DATE", _launch_date);
add_metadata("LAUNCH_TIME", _launch_time);

// these would be computed in CMake and put into a generated version.h header
add_metadata("CALIPER_VERSION", CALIPER_VERSION_STRING);
add_metadata("CALIPER_GIT_DESCRIBE", CALIPER_GIT_DESCRIBE);
add_metadata("CALIPER_GIT_REVISION", CALIPER_GIT_REVISION);

add_metadata("CPU_MODEL", _cpu_info.model);
add_metadata("CPU_VENDOR", _cpu_info.vendor);
add_metadata("CPU_FEATURES", _cpu_info.features);
add_metadata("CPU_FREQUENCY", _cpu_info.frequency);
add_metadata("HW_CONCURRENCY", threading::hw_concurrency());
add_metadata("HW_PHYSICAL_CPU", threading::hw_physicalcpu());

for(int i = 0; i < 3; ++i)
{
    auto              _cache_size = cpu::cache_size::get(i + 1);
    std::stringstream _cache_lvl;
    _cache_lvl << "HW_L" << (i + 1) << "_CACHE_SIZE";
    add_metadata(_cache_lvl.str(), _cache_size);
}

[daboehme]

We actually have a metadata collection API much like the one suggested by @jrmadsen . Metadata attributes are called "global attributes" in Caliper, and you can use the cali_set_global_[int|double|string]_byname calls to set them, e.g. cali_set_global_string_byname("MY_VERSION", "v4.2");. However, the preferred way to do this is through the Adiak library and the adiak_import service. Adiak has functions to grab some common info like launch date, as well as key-value style functions to add custom application-specific metadata.

There is also a way to import metadata from environment variables: the env service. I totally forgot about that 😄. You can use CALI_ENV_EXTRA to specify the names of environment variables that should be imported, e.g.

$ export MY_GIT_REVISION="xyzabc"
$ export MY_VERSION="v4.2"
$ CALI_SERVICES_ENABLE=env,... CALI_ENV_EXTRA="MY_GIT_REVISION,MY_VERSION" ./app

Caliper adds this metadata to the machine-readable .json and .cali outputs, but we're still missing a way to print them together with the human-readable tree or table reports. This shouldn't be difficult though, and I'll add that.

[balos1]

I'm closing this now since you answered my question over a year ago. Thanks!