Appose Python

WARNING: Appose is currently in incubation. Not all features described below are functional. This document has some aspirational aspects!

What is Appose?

Appose is a library for interprocess cooperation with shared memory. The guiding principles are simplicity and efficiency.

Appose was written to enable easy execution of Python-based deep learning from Java without copying tensors, but its utility extends beyond that. The steps for using Appose are:

• Build an Environment with the dependencies you need.
• Create a Service linked to a worker, which runs in its own process.
• Execute scripts on the worker by launching Tasks.
• Receive status updates from the task asynchronously via callbacks.

For more about Appose as a whole, see https://apposed.org.

What is this project?

This is the Python implementation of Appose.

How do I use it?

The name of the package is appose.

PyPI/Pip

To use the PyPI package, add appose to your project dependencies.

Depending on how your project is set up, this might entail editing requirements.txt, setup.py, setup.cfg, and/or pyproject.toml.

If you are just starting out, we recommend using pyproject.toml (see this guide):

dependencies = [
  "appose"
]

Conda/Mamba

To use the conda-forge package, add appose to your environment.yml's dependencies section:

dependencies:
  - appose

Examples

Here is a minimal example for calling into Java from Python:

import appose
env = appose.java(vendor="zulu", version="17").build()
with env.groovy() as groovy:
    task = groovy.task("5 + 6")
    task.wait_for()
    result = task.outputs["result"]
    assert 11 == result

Note: The appose.java builder is planned, but not yet implemented.

Here is an example using a few more of Appose's features:

import appose
from time import sleep

golden_ratio_in_groovy = """
// Approximate the golden ratio using the Fibonacci sequence.
previous = 0
current = 1
for (i=0; i<iterations; i++) {
    if (task.cancelRequested) {
        task.cancel()
        break
    }
    task.update(null, i, iterations)
    v = current
    current += previous
    previous = v
}
task.outputs["numer"] = current
task.outputs["denom"] = previous
"""

env = appose.java(vendor="zulu", version="17").build()
with env.groovy() as groovy:
    task = groovy.task(golden_ratio_in_groovy)

    def task_listener(event):
        match event.responseType:
            case ResponseType.UPDATE:
                print(f"Progress {task.current}/{task.maximum}")
            case ResponseType.COMPLETION:
                numer = task.outputs["numer"]
                denom = task.outputs["denom"]
                ratio = numer / denom
                print(f"Task complete. Result: {numer}/{denom} =~ {ratio}");
            case ResponseType.CANCELATION:
                print("Task canceled")
            case ResponseType.FAILURE:
                print(f"Task failed: {task.error}")

    task.listen(task_listener)

    task.start()
    sleep(1)
    if not task.status.is_finished():
        # Task is taking too long; request a cancelation.
        task.cancel()

    task.wait_for()

Of course, the above examples could have been done all in one language. But hopefully they hint at the possibilities of easy cross-language integration.

Issue tracker

All implementations of Appose use the same issue tracker:

https://github.com/apposed/appose/issues