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.