Use pyarrow instead of msgpack.

CHANGES.md

@@ -8,6 +8,8 @@ so you won't need to look at here very often.
 Here are a list of things that were changed, starting from an early version.
 TensorFlow itself also changed APIs before 1.0 and those are not listed here.
 
++ [2018/04/05] msgpack is replaced by pyarrow. If you want compatibility with old serialized data,
+	manually uninstall pyarrow, and msgpack will be used as a fallback.
 + [2018/03/20] `ModelDesc` starts to use simplified interfaces:
 	+ `_get_inputs()` renamed to `inputs()` and returns `tf.placeholder`s.
 	+ `build_graph(self, tensor1, tensor2)` returns the cost tensor directly.

docs/conf.py

@@ -25,13 +25,13 @@ ON_RTD = (os.environ.get('READTHEDOCS') == 'True')
 
 
 MOCK_MODULES = ['tabulate', 'h5py',
-                'cv2', 'zmq', 'subprocess32', 'lmdb',
+                'cv2', 'zmq', 'lmdb',
                 'sklearn', 'sklearn.datasets',
                 'scipy', 'scipy.misc', 'scipy.io',
                 'tornado', 'tornado.concurrent',
                 'horovod', 'horovod.tensorflow',
-                'pyarrow', 'msgpack', 'msgpack_numpy',
-                'functools32']
+                'pyarrow',
+                'subprocess32', 'functools32']
 for mod_name in MOCK_MODULES:
     sys.modules[mod_name] = mock.Mock(name=mod_name)
 sys.modules['cv2'].__version__ = '3.2.1'    # fake version

examples/A3C-Gym/train-atari.py

@@ -4,6 +4,7 @@
 # Author: Yuxin Wu <ppwwyyxxc@gmail.com>
 
 import numpy as np
+import sys
 import os
 import uuid
 import argparse

requirements.txt

@@ -3,8 +3,7 @@ six
 termcolor>=1.1
 tabulate>=0.7.7
 tqdm>4.11.1
-msgpack>=0.5.2
-msgpack-numpy>=0.4.0
+pyarrow>=0.9.0
 pyzmq>=16
 subprocess32; python_version < '3.0'
 functools32; python_version < '3.0'

tensorpack/dataflow/dataset/ilsvrc.py

@@ -106,8 +106,17 @@ class ILSVRCMeta(object):
             arr = cv2.resize(arr, size[::-1])
         return arr
 
+    @staticmethod
+    def guess_dir_structure(dir):
+        """
+        Return the directory structure of "dir".
+
+        Args:
+            dir(str): something like '/path/to/imagenet/val'
 
-def _guess_dir_structure(dir):
+        Returns:
+            either 'train' or 'original'
+        """
         subdir = os.listdir(dir)[0]
         # find a subdir starting with 'n'
         if subdir.startswith('n') and \
@@ -145,7 +154,7 @@ class ILSVRC12Files(RNGDataFlow):
         if name == 'train':
             dir_structure = 'train'
         if dir_structure is None:
-            dir_structure = _guess_dir_structure(self.full_dir)
+            dir_structure = ILSVRCMeta.guess_dir_structure(self.full_dir)
 
         meta = ILSVRCMeta(meta_dir)
         self.imglist = meta.get_image_list(name, dir_structure)

tensorpack/dataflow/parallel.py

@@ -400,6 +400,8 @@ class MultiThreadPrefetchData(DataFlow):
 class PlasmaPutData(ProxyDataFlow):
     """
     Put each data point to plasma shared memory object store, and yield the object id instead.
+
+    Experimental.
     """
     def __init__(self, ds):
         super(PlasmaPutData, self).__init__(ds)

tensorpack/utils/logger.py

@@ -98,7 +98,8 @@ def set_logger_dir(dirname, action=None):
         # unload and close the old file handler, so that we may safely delete the logger directory
         _logger.removeHandler(_FILE_HANDLER)
         del _FILE_HANDLER
-    if os.path.isdir(dirname) and len(os.listdir(dirname)):
+    # If directory exists and nonempty (ignore hidden files), prompt for action
+    if os.path.isdir(dirname) and len([x for x in os.listdir(dirname) if x[0] != '.']):
         if not action:
             _logger.warn("""\
 Log directory {} exists! Use 'd' to delete it. """.format(dirname))

tensorpack/utils/serialize.py

@@ -2,23 +2,7 @@
 # -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
 # File: serialize.py
 
-import sys
-import msgpack
-import msgpack_numpy
-msgpack_numpy.patch()
-
-# https://github.com/apache/arrow/pull/1223#issuecomment-359895666
-old_mod = sys.modules.get('torch', None)
-sys.modules['torch'] = None
-try:
-    import pyarrow as pa
-except ImportError:
-    pa = None
-if old_mod is not None:
-    sys.modules['torch'] = old_mod
-else:
-    del sys.modules['torch']
-
+from .develop import create_dummy_func
 
 __all__ = ['loads', 'dumps']
 
@@ -58,6 +42,25 @@ def loads_pyarrow(buf):
     return pa.deserialize(buf)
 
 
+try:
+    # fixed in pyarrow 0.9: https://github.com/apache/arrow/pull/1223#issuecomment-359895666
+    import pyarrow as pa
+except ImportError:
+    pa = None
+    dumps_pyarrow = create_dummy_func('dumps_pyarrow', ['pyarrow'])  # noqa
+    loads_pyarrow = create_dummy_func('loads_pyarrow', ['pyarrow'])  # noqa
+
+try:
+    import msgpack
+    import msgpack_numpy
+    msgpack_numpy.patch()
+except ImportError:
+    assert pa is not None, "pyarrow is a dependency of tensorpack!"
+    loads_msgpack = create_dummy_func(  # noqa
+        'loads_msgpack', ['msgpack', 'msgpack_numpy'])
+    dumps_msgpack = create_dummy_func(  # noqa
+        'dumps_msgpack', ['msgpack', 'msgpack_numpy'])
+
 if pa is None:
     loads = loads_msgpack
     dumps = dumps_msgpack