Configuration

The beat command-line utility can operate independently of any initial configuration. By runig for example the following command:

$ beat dataformats list --remote

By default, beat is pre-configured to access the main BEAT website anonymously, but it can be configured to use secret keys for any of its users and/or access an alternative website installed somewhere else. This allows users to push modified objects into the platform, completing the development loop:

  1. Pull objects of interest locally.

  2. Develop new objects or modify existing ones.

  3. Test locally, on an environment similar to the one available at the remote platform. (If the user wants to run the experiment locally without pushing it back to the platform they can use their own environment)

  4. Push back modifications and then scale-up experiment running to explore more databases and more parameter combinations.

In order to properly configure a working prefix and memorize access options on that directory, do the following from your shell:

$ beat config set user myname token thistoken
...

You can verify your username and token have been memorized on that working directory with:

$ beat config show
{
    "cache": "cache",
    "editor": null,
    "platform": "https://www.beat-eu.org/platform/",
    "prefix": "/scratch/builds/beat/docs/doc/prefix",
    "token": null,
    "user": "conda"
}

By default, the command-line program considers the prefix directory on your current working directory as your prefix. You can override this setting using the --prefix flag:

$ beat --prefix=/Users/myname/work/beat config show
...

Note that it is also possible to set a different code editor

$ beat config set editor vim

So we can imagine using the edit command to edit locally any object.

For example editing an algorithm named user/integers_echo/1 can be done using the following command:

$ beat algorithm edit user/integers_echo/1

You can also use the path command on all your objects to identify all the files and local paths for any given object.

For example we can get the files path associated with the algorithm named user/integers_echo/1 using the following command:

$ beat algorithm path user/integers_echo/1

Local Overrides

If you use the config set flag --local, then the configuration values are not set on the default configuration file (~/.beatrc), but instead in the current working directory (./.beatrc). Configuration values found the local directory take precedence over values configured on the global file. Values from the command-line (such as those passed with --prefix as explained above) take precedence over both settings.

You can set a variable on the local directory to override the global settings like this:

# set a different prefix when operating from the current directory
$ beat config set --local prefix `pwd`/other_prefix
$ beat config show
...

Database Root Directories

When running an experiment in the BEAT ecosystem using the local executor (the default executor, also behind the --local flag), beat will look into your configuration for any options set by the user that follow the format database/<db name>/<db version>. beat expects that this option points to a string representing the path to the root folder of the actual database files for the given database.

For example, the AT&T “Database of Faces” is available on the BEAT platform as the “atnt” database. The third version of the “atnt” database would be referenced as “atnt/3”. The object “atnt/3” has a root folder defined on the BEAT platform already, and changing this locally would mean creating a new version of the database. Instead, you may override that path by setting the configuration option database/atnt/3 to your local path to the database files. Assuming your username is “user” and you extracted the database files to ~/Downloads/atnt_db, you can set database/atnt/3 to /home/user/Downloads/atnt_db, and BEAT will find the database files.

You may explore different configuration options with the --help flag of beat config:

$ beat config --help
Usage: beat config [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

  The manager for beat cmdline configuration.

Options:
  -v, --verbose   Increase the verbosity level from 0 (only error messages) to
                  1 (warnings), 2 (log messages), 3 (debug information) by
                  adding the --verbose option as often as desired (e.g. '-vvv'
                  for debug).
  -?, -h, --help  Show this message and exit.

Commands:
  get   Prints out the contents of a single field.
  set   Sets the value for a key.
  show  Shows the configuration.