Error: could not find function "makeNode" (was: How to plan multisession with workers on windows?)

[kapsner]

The following call to plan on a windows machine runs in an error message:

future::plan("multisession", worker = 4)

Error in makeNode(workers[[ii]], port = port, ..., rank = ii, action = "options", :
could not find function "makeNode"

How can the workers be defined using "multisession" on windows?

[orozcoae89]

Can you check the notes that wrote @HenrikBengtsson here:

https://github.com/HenrikBengtsson/future/discussions/598

Is possible see you session info? Because, I replicated your code on my pc and it works fine.

Erick

[kapsner]

Hi @orozcoae89, thanks for the quick reply. SessionInfo is:

sessionInfo()
R version 4.1.2 (2021-11-01)
Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64 (64-bit)
Running under: Windows 10 x64 (build 19044)

Matrix products: default

locale:
[1] LC_COLLATE=German_Germany.1252 LC_CTYPE=German_Germany.1252 LC_MONETARY=German_Germany.1252
[4] LC_NUMERIC=C LC_TIME=German_Germany.1252

attached base packages:
[1] stats graphics grDevices utils datasets methods base

other attached packages:
[1] future_1.24.0

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] Rcpp_1.0.8 mvtnorm_1.1-3 lattice_0.20-45 listenv_0.8.0 tidyr_1.2.0
[6] png_0.1-7 assertthat_0.2.1 digest_0.6.29 utf8_1.2.2 parallelly_1.30.0
[11] R6_2.5.1 tiff_0.1-11 backports_1.4.1 evaluate_0.15 ggplot2_3.3.5
[16] pillar_1.7.0 rlang_1.0.2 minqa_1.2.4 data.table_1.14.2 performance_0.8.0
[21] nloptr_2.0.0 Matrix_1.4-0 effectsize_0.6.0.1 rmarkdown_2.13 ggeffects_1.1.1
[26] splines_4.1.2 lme4_1.1-28 munsell_0.5.0 sjPlot_2.8.10 broom_0.7.12
[31] compiler_4.1.2 modelr_0.1.8 xfun_0.30 pkgconfig_2.0.3 parameters_0.16.0
[36] globals_0.14.0 htmltools_0.5.2 insight_0.16.0 tidyselect_1.1.1 tibble_3.1.6
[41] codetools_0.2-18 fansi_1.0.2 crayon_1.5.0 dplyr_1.0.8 MASS_7.3-54
[46] sjmisc_2.8.9 grid_4.1.2 nlme_3.1-153 xtable_1.8-4 gtable_0.3.0
[51] lifecycle_1.0.1 DBI_1.1.2 magrittr_2.0.2 bayestestR_0.11.5 scales_1.1.1
[56] datawizard_0.2.3 estimability_1.3 cli_3.2.0 sjtable2df_0.0.1.9003 ellipsis_0.3.2
[61] generics_0.1.2 vctrs_0.3.8 boot_1.3-28 sjlabelled_1.1.8 tools_4.1.2
[66] glue_1.6.2 purrr_0.3.4 sjstats_0.18.1 emmeans_1.7.2 parallel_4.1.2
[71] fastmap_1.1.0 yaml_2.3.5 colorspace_2.0-3 knitr_1.37

I have also checked the notes, however, without success finding a solution to the issue there

[HenrikBengtsson]

This (i.e. future::plan("multisession", workers=2)) does indeed work and has worked for a long time. It's also part of the unit tests that runs all the time and on all operating systems. So, I'm 99.9999999% sure you have something in your R setup that causes this problem.

I would first retry it without all those other packages loaded, i.e. try in a fresh R session without loading other things. I don't think that will make a difference, but whenever troubleshooting something weird, you always want to do so in a fresh, vanilla R session to rule out other things.

Second, immediately after you get the error, call traceback() - what does it output?

[kapsner]

Thanks @HenrikBengtsson, retrying in a fresh R session solved the issue:

However, I am still not sure, what exactly causes this error.... we have an R-package (DQAstats) and one of the users encountered the issue. Unfortunately, the error also happens on the windows-machine of our github actions:

It took me some time to reproduce the error since I normally do not develop on a Windows machine.

[HenrikBengtsson]

traceback() will help to understand.

Please please please use cutnpasted output in code blocks and not use screenshots, which are hard to read and not accessible.

[kapsner]

Sorry. Here is the output from traceback():

plan("multisession", worker = 4)
Error in makeNode(workers[[ii]], port = port, ..., rank = ii, action = "options", :
could not find function "makeNode"
traceback()
12: makeClusterPSOCK(workers, ...)
11: makeCluster(workers, ...)
10: ClusterRegistry("start", workers = workers, ...)
9: (function (future, workers = NULL, ...)
{
if (is.function(workers))
workers <- workers()
if (is.null(workers)) {
getDefaultCluster <- importParallel("getDefaultCluster")
workers <- getDefaultCluster()
workers <- addCovrLibPath(workers)
}
else if (is.character(workers) || is.numeric(workers)) {
workers <- ClusterRegistry("start", workers = workers,
...)
}
else {
workers <- as.cluster(workers)
workers <- addCovrLibPath(workers)
}
if (!inherits(workers, "cluster")) {
stopf("Argument 'workers' is not of class 'cluster': %s",
paste(sQuote(class(workers)), collapse = ", "))
...
8: do.call(as_ClusterFuture, args = c(list(future, workers = workers),
args[!future_args]), quote = TRUE)
7: ClusterFuture(expr = expr, substitute = FALSE, envir = envir,
workers = workers, ...)
6: MultisessionFuture(..., workers = workers, lazy = lazy, rscript_libs = rscript_libs,
envir = envir)
5: strategy(..., worker = worker, NA = NULL, NA = NULL)
4: evaluator(NA, label = "future-plan-test", globals = FALSE, lazy = FALSE)
3: plan_init()
2: plan_set(newStack, skip = .skip, cleanup = .cleanup, init = .init)
1: plan("multisession", worker = 4)

[HenrikBengtsson]

Studying your traceback() in detail, I see that you specify argument worker (singular) instead of workers (plural). That's the problem. I can reproduce the error when using the singular form:

> future::plan("multisession", worker = 2)
Error in makeNode(workers[[ii]], port = port, ..., rank = ii, action = "options",  : 
  could not find function "makeNode"

I recommend that you set options(warnPartialMatchArgs = TRUE) in your ~/.Rprofile to get a warning about these type of mistakes, e.g.

> options(warnPartialMatchArgs = TRUE)
> future::plan("multisession", worker = 2)
Error in makeNode(workers[[ii]], port = port, ..., rank = ii, action = "options",  : 
  could not find function "makeNode"
In addition: Warning message:
In makeCluster(workers, ...) :
  partial argument match of 'worker' to 'workers'

[kapsner]

Thanks a lot @HenrikBengtsson,

you are totally right - I have used the wrong argument. Now, everything works fine.

And also thanks for the hint on the option to .Rprofile!!