[Bioc-devel] What is good convention for package-local BiocParallel param?

[Shian Su]

Hello Developers,

I’m using BiocParallel for parallelism, and I understand that register() is the recommended method for setting threads. But I am reluctant to ask people to run code for my package which changes how other packages operate, so I figured I’d use local bp params. Recent discussions of RNG has made me worried there may be hidden state gotcha’s I’ve not considered. The current implementation is

set_mypkg_threads <- function(n) {
if (n == 1) {
options(“mypkg.bpparam” = SerialParam())
} else if (n > 1) {
if (.Platform$OS.type == "windows") {
options(“mypkg.bpparam" = SnowParam(nthreads))
} else {
options(“mypkg.bpparam" = MulticoreParam(nthreads))
}
}
}

Then elsewhere in my package I make use of parallelism as follows

bplapply(
BPPARAM = getOption(“mypkg.bpparam”, bpparam()),
…
)

Where getOption() either retrieves my set option or the default value given by bpparam(). So the behaviour is that if users have not registered params for my package specifically then it will take the BiocParallel default, but otherwise it will use my package’s local bpparam.

Also I know that as currently implemented, I preclude cluster parallelism on non-Windows machines. But it’s easy to fix. Just looking for feedback on the approach.

Kind regards,
Shian Su

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