# Tracking There are a large number of experiment tracking API's available, however getting them all to work with in a multi-processing environment can oftentimes be complex. 🤗 Accelerate provides a general tracking API that can be used to log useful items during your script through [`Accelerator.log`] ## Integrated Trackers Currently `Accelerate` supports four trackers out-of-the-box: - TensorBoard - WandB - CometML - MLFlow To use any of them, pass in the selected type(s) to the `log_with` parameter in [`Accelerate`]: ```python from accelerate import Accelerator from accelerate.utils import LoggerType accelerator = Accelerator(log_with="all") # For all available trackers in the environment accelerator = Accelerator(log_with="wandb") accelerator = Accelerator(log_with=["wandb", LoggerType.TENSORBOARD]) ``` At the start of your experiment [`Accelerator.init_trackers`] should be used to setup your project, and potentially add any experiment hyperparameters to be logged: ```python hps = {"num_iterations": 5, "learning_rate": 1e-2} accelerator.init_trackers("my_project", config=hps) ``` When you are ready to log any data, [`Accelerator.log`] should be used. A `step` can also be passed in to correlate the data with a particular step in the training loop. ```python accelerator.log({"train_loss": 1.12, "valid_loss": 0.8}, step=1) ``` Once you've finished training, make sure to run [`Accelerator.end_training`] so that all the trackers can run their finish functionalities if they have any. ```python accelerator.end_training() ``` A full example is below: ```python from accelerate import Accelerator accelerator = Accelerator(log_with="all") config = { "num_iterations": 5, "learning_rate": 1e-2, "loss_function": str(my_loss_function), } accelerator.init_trackers("example_project", config=config) my_model, my_optimizer, my_training_dataloader = accelerate.prepare(my_model, my_optimizer, my_training_dataloader) device = accelerator.device my_model.to(device) for iteration in config["num_iterations"]: for step, batch in my_training_dataloader: my_optimizer.zero_grad() inputs, targets = batch inputs = inputs.to(device) targets = targets.to(device) outputs = my_model(inputs) loss = my_loss_function(outputs, targets) accelerator.backward(loss) my_optimizer.step() accelerator.log({"training_loss": loss}, step=step) accelerator.end_training() ``` If a tracker requires a directory to save data to such as `TensorBoard` then a `logging_dir` or `project_dir` can be passed in. `project_dir` is useful if there are other further configurations such as those which can be combined with the [`~utils.ProjectConfiguration`] dataclass. ```python accelerator = Accelerator(log_with="tensorboard", logging_dir=".") ``` ## Implementing Custom Trackers To implement a new tracker to be used in `Accelerator`, a new one can be made through implementing the [`GeneralTracker`] class. Every tracker must implement three functions and have three properties: - `__init__`: - Should store a `run_name` and initialize the tracker API of the integrated library. - If a tracker stores their data locally (such as TensorBoard), a `logging_dir` parameter can be added. - `store_init_configuration`: - Should take in a `values` dictionary and store them as a one-time experiment configuration - `log`: - Should take in a `values` dictionary and a `step`, and should log them to the run - `name` (`str`): - A unique string name for the tracker, such as `"wandb"` for the wandb tracker. - This will be used for interacting with this tracker specifically - `requires_logging_directory` (`bool`): - Whether a `logging_dir` is needed for this particular tracker and if it uses one. - `tracker`: - This should be implemented as a `@property` function - Should return the internal tracking mechanism the library uses, such as the `run` object for `wandb`. A brief example can be seen below with an integration with Weights and Biases, containing only the relevant information: ```python from accelerate.tracking import GeneralTracker from typing import Optional import wandb class MyCustomTracker(GeneralTracker): name = "wandb" requires_logging_directory = False def __init__(self, run_name: str): self.run_name = run_name run = wandb.init(self.run_name) @property def tracker(self): return self.run.run def store_init_configuration(self, values: dict): wandb.config(values) def log(self, values: dict, step: Optional[int] = None): wandb.log(values, step=step) ``` When you are ready to build your `Accelerator` object, pass in an **instance** of your tracker to [`Accelerator.log_with`] to have it automatically be used with the API: ```python tracker = MyCustomTracker("some_run_name") accelerator = Accelerator(log_with=tracker) ``` These also can be mixed with existing trackers, including with `"all"`: ```python tracker = MyCustomTracker("some_run_name") accelerator = Accelerator(log_with=[tracker, "all"]) ``` ## Accessing the internal tracker If some custom interactions with a tracker might be wanted directly, you can quickly access one using the [`Accelerator.get_tracker`] method. Just pass in the string corresponding to a tracker's `.name` attribute and it will return that tracker on the main process. This example shows doing so with wandb: ```python wandb_tracker = accelerator.get_tracker("wandb") ``` From there you can interact with `wandb`'s `run` object like normal: Make sure to only interact with trackers on the main process! ```python if accelerator.is_main_process: wandb_run.log_artifact(some_artifact_to_log) ``` ## When a wrapper cannot work If a library has an API that does not follow a strict `.log` with an overall dictionary such as Neptune.AI, logging can be done manually under an `if accelerator.is_main_process` statement: ```diff from accelerate import Accelerator + import neptune.new as neptune accelerator = Accelerator() + run = neptune.init(...) my_model, my_optimizer, my_training_dataloader = accelerate.prepare(my_model, my_optimizer, my_training_dataloader) device = accelerator.device my_model.to(device) for iteration in config["num_iterations"]: for batch in my_training_dataloader: my_optimizer.zero_grad() inputs, targets = batch inputs = inputs.to(device) targets = targets.to(device) outputs = my_model(inputs) loss = my_loss_function(outputs, targets) total_loss += loss accelerator.backward(loss) my_optimizer.step() + if accelerator.is_main_process: + run["logs/training/batch/loss"].log(loss) ```