Remember Dashboard Argument States

dreens

I frequently need to reboot my ARTIQ dashboard due to the host computer installing updates and other reasons. It'd be awesome if the dashboard would keep track of the status of all dashboard arguments of all the scripts that are loaded. This way, if I have to reboot, I don't have to remember a ton of checkboxes to check/unckeck, my favorite choices for EnumerationValues, favorite settings for rangescans, etc.

Now, I know that I already have a way to code in default values for dashboard arguments, but this is rarely sufficient. I almost always prefer that the dashboard arguments just persist across sessions rather than revert to some default which was only a best-guess during coding, not an empirical optimum developed during actual data-taking.

Any suggestions? I'm open to writing code for this myself and would appreciate a shove in the right direction. Maybe the dashboard args could have a flag where one specifies them to remember their state, and this somehow dumps into the same file that remembers the dashboard layout, or another file in the same directory?

sb10q

It's actually supposed to do that. Does it not?
https://github.com/m-labs/artiq/blob/master/artiq/dashboard/experiments.py#L448-L458

dreens

No it definitely does not do that.

I'm running on windows via msys2, release-8, if that is relevant.

When I add some debug statements to experiments.py, I find that it does visit the code you highlighted (different lines in the release I am using, but same code). It is trying to write the dashboard save state file to C:\Users\%username%\, whereas most of the other ARTIQ related files live in C:\msys64\home\%username%.

I tried overwriting the line in experiments.py that controls where the file saves, but I'm not finding a dashboard save state file popping up in either C:\Users\%username%\ or wherever else I specify in artiq/dashboard/experiments.py, such as C:\msys64\home\%username%.

I don't understand the code well enough to understand where the saving actually happens and debug that further.

dreens

Tried running master and dashboard with -v flags, I am finding one error related to file handles that is thrown during shutdown of the dashboard, but its not clear what throws it since the stack trace just points to sipyco's pipe_idc, which is likely just the messenger and not the actual source of the error:

ERROR:dashboard:qasync.QEventLoop:Task exception was never retrieved
future: <Task finished name='Task-52' coro=<AsyncioParentComm.autoclose() done, defined at C:/msys64/clang64/lib/python3.12/site-packages/sipyco/pipe_ipc.py:118> exception=OSError(9, 'The handle is invalid', None, 6, None)>
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:/msys64/clang64/lib/python3.12/site-packages/sipyco/pipe_ipc.py", line 120, in autoclose
self.server[0].close()
File "C:/msys64/clang64/lib/python3.12/asyncio/windows_events.py", line 298, in close
pipe.close()
File "C:/msys64/clang64/lib/python3.12/asyncio/windows_utils.py", line 107, in close
CloseHandle(self.handle)
OSError: [WinError 6] The handle is invalid

dreens

Okay I realized that the "self.hdf5_load_directory" in dashboard/experiments.py is not where the dashboard save state is put. Rather, it is the file passed to the StateManager in gui/state.py, which in my windows distro turns out to be C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\m-labs\artiq\8. I can verify that the dashboard save state file is created, and correctly adjusts to reflect the updated state of my dashboard arguments when I adjust them. The file stays correct when I close out the dashboard, but when I reload it dashboard args still revert.

I noticed that the dashboard save state includes tons of code files for my rather weighty applets. (the file is almost 1 MB). I'm wondering if pyon could be having an issue deserializing something in the code?

I'll try digging a bit deeper.

dreens

Aha! No it just doesn't do it at all.
The experiments.py almost does it- it only reloads the state of the dock in terms of what has been caret expanded and where we are scrolled within an open experiment dock. But the dashboard argument state is just never loaded.

I've written it in successfully. Maybe I'll make my first ever push to the artiq repo....