options("test"=5) are not global

[Rloveeee]

I think I found a small bug in the future.apply package:

options("test"=5)
test=4
plan(multiprocess, workers = 12)
FUN=function(x) c(getOption("test"),test)
future.apply::future_lapply(list(1,2),FUN=FUN,future.globals=TRUE)
future.apply::future_lapply(list(1,2),FUN=FUN,future.globals=FALSE)
lapply(list(1,2),FUN=FUN)

It seems that future.apply::future_lapply can't recover getOptions( ) stuff which are a sort of global variable.

Best

[HenrikBengtsson]

Hi. Yes, automatic handling of options would be useful.

Unfortunately, we can't just pass all options on to futures as is. For example, some options are specific to the current R session/compute system (remember that futures can be resolved anywhere - also on a computer across the world). Other options are set conditionally on environment variables, which again, may be set differently depending on the computer where the future runs - we need to make sure that is also respected.

We've got futureverse/future#134 that is dedicated to this topic. Note that there is also an example how you can "pass" options yourself already now.

I'm closing this one - please continue the discussion there, e.g. if you have further ideas or thoughts. When we've figured out a way to support options in the core Future API, which probably will start off as a manual options argument, then we'll probably add a corresponding future.options argument to the functions of the future.apply package.