Checkpointing in FitBenchmarking

In some cases, fitting can take a long time and rerunning the fits to change output options is inefficient. For this situation we provide a checkpointing file.

Using the checkpointing feature

Checkpointing in FitBenchmarking can be used to rerun the report generation with new options, e.g. plots on, or to combine the data from multiple fitting runs.

By default, when running FitBenchmarking it will create a checkpoint file in the results directory which will contain all the information required to create output tables and plots.

To generate new reports for an existing checkpoint, use the --load_checkpoint option:

fitbenchmarking --load_checkpoint

This can use the same options file as in the original run but with the output changed, or separate one as long as the results directory and checkpointing file are the same.

There is also a separate tool for working with checkpoint files fitbenchmarking-cp that can be used to regenerate the reports or merge checkpoint files.

fitbenchmarking-cp report --help
fitbenchmarking-cp merge --help

options table for checkpointing
Option	Flags	Actions	Help
Debug mode	`-d`	`--debug-mode`	Enable debug mode (prints traceback).
File name	`-f`	`--file-name`	The path to a fitbenchmarking checkpoint file. If omitted, this will be taken from the options file.
Options file	`-o`	`--options-file`	The path to a fitbenchmarking options file
Strategy	`-s`	`--strategy`	The merge strategy to use when dealing with conflicts. Selecting accuracy and runtime will select for the lowest conflicting runs

Warnings

Using --load_checkpoint will not re-run any results or run any new combinations that have been added to the options file.

This command also does not check whether the checkpoint file has been edited manually. Manual editing may be desired for removing data while this feature is developed but should be done with caution to ensure results are still comparable.

Important

It is recommended that the same version of python is used to load the checkpoint file as was used when the file was created. We also recommend that any checkpoint files to be merged are created using the same version of python.