mclapply.hack.R

##
## mclapply.hack.R
##
## Nathan VanHoudnos
## nathanvan AT northwestern FULL STOP edu
## July 14, 2014
##
## A script to implement a hackish version of 
## parallel:mclapply() on Windows machines.
## On Linux or Mac, the script has no effect
## beyond loading the parallel library. 

require(parallel)  
require(doParallel)

## Define the hack
mclapply.hack <- function(..., num=2) {
  ## Create a cluster
  size.of.list <- length(list(...)[[1]])
  
  # Problem
  # Error in unserialize(node$con) : error reading from connection
  cl <- makePSOCKcluster(min(num, detectCores()), outfile='')
  
  ## Find out the names of the loaded packages 
  loaded.package.names <- c(
    ## Base packages
    sessionInfo()$basePkgs,
    ## Additional packages
    names( sessionInfo()$otherPkgs ))
  
  tryCatch( {
    
    ## Copy over all of the objects within scope to
    ## all clusters. 
    this.env <- environment()
    while( identical( this.env, globalenv() ) == FALSE ) {
      clusterExport(cl,
                    ls(all.names=TRUE, env=this.env),
                    envir=this.env)
      this.env <- parent.env(environment())
    }
    clusterExport(cl,
                  ls(all.names=TRUE, env=globalenv()),
                  envir=globalenv())
    
    ## Load the libraries on all the clusters
    ## N.B. length(cl) returns the number of clusters
    parLapply( cl, 1:length(cl), function(xx){
      lapply(loaded.package.names, function(yy) {
        require(yy , character.only=TRUE)})
    })
    
    ## Run the lapply in parallel 
    return( parLapply( cl, ...) )
  }, finally = {        
    ## Stop the cluster
    stopCluster(cl)
  })
}

## Warn the user if they are using Windows
if( Sys.info()[['sysname']] == 'Windows' ){
  message(paste(
    "\n", 
    "   *** Microsoft Windows detected ***\n",
    "   \n",
    "   For technical reasons, the MS Windows version of mclapply()\n",
    "   is implemented as a serial function instead of a parallel\n",
    "   function.",
    "   \n\n",
    "   As a quick hack, we replace this serial version of mclapply()\n",
    "   with a wrapper to parLapply() for this R session. Please see\n\n",
    "     http://www.stat.cmu.edu/~nmv/2014/07/14/implementing-mclapply-on-windows \n\n",
    "   for details.\n\n"))
}

## If the OS is Windows, set mclapply to the
## the hackish version. Otherwise, leave the
## definition alone. 
mclapply <- switch( Sys.info()[['sysname']],
                    Windows = {mclapply.hack}, 
                    Linux   = {mclapply},
                    Darwin  = {mclapply})

## end mclapply.hack.R
yongcha/entroPD documentation built on May 23, 2019, 9:05 p.m.