mclapply.hack.R

mclapply.hack.R

##
## mclapply.hack.R
##
## Nathan VanHoudnos
## nathanvan AT northwestern FULL STOP edu
## July 14, 2014
##
## A script to implement a hackish version of 
## parallel:mclapply() on Windows machines.
## On Linux or Mac, the script has no effect
## beyond loading the parallel library. 

require(parallel)    

## Define the hack
mclapply.hack <- function(...) {
    ## Create a cluster
    size.of.list <- length(list(...)[[1]])
    cl <- makeCluster( min(size.of.list, detectCores()) )

    ## Find out the names of the loaded packages 
    loaded.package.names <- c(
        ## Base packages
        sessionInfo()$basePkgs,
        ## Additional packages
        names( sessionInfo()$otherPkgs ))

    tryCatch( {

       ## Copy over all of the objects within scope to
       ## all clusters. 
       this.env <- environment()
       while( identical( this.env, globalenv() ) == FALSE ) {
           clusterExport(cl,
                         ls(all.names=TRUE, env=this.env),
                         envir=this.env)
           this.env <- parent.env(environment())
       }
       clusterExport(cl,
                     ls(all.names=TRUE, env=globalenv()),
                     envir=globalenv())
       
       ## Load the libraries on all the clusters
       ## N.B. length(cl) returns the number of clusters
       parLapply( cl, 1:length(cl), function(xx){
           lapply(loaded.package.names, function(yy) {
               require(yy , character.only=TRUE)})
       })
       
       ## Run the lapply in parallel 
       return( parLapply( cl, ...) )
    }, finally = {        
       ## Stop the cluster
       stopCluster(cl)
    })
}

## Warn the user if they are using Windows
if( Sys.info()[['sysname']] == 'Windows' ){
    message(paste(
      "\n", 
      "   *** Microsoft Windows detected ***\n",
      "   \n",
      "   For technical reasons, the MS Windows version of mclapply()\n",
      "   is implemented as a serial function instead of a parallel\n",
      "   function.",
      "   \n\n",
      "   As a quick hack, we replace this serial version of mclapply()\n",
      "   with a wrapper to parLapply() for this R session. Please see\n\n",
      "     http://www.stat.cmu.edu/~nmv/2014/07/14/implementing-mclapply-on-windows \n\n",
      "   for details.\n\n"))
}

## If the OS is Windows, set mclapply to the
## the hackish version. Otherwise, leave the
## definition alone. 
mclapply <- switch( Sys.info()[['sysname']],
   Windows = {mclapply.hack}, 
   Linux   = {mclapply},
   Darwin  = {mclapply})

## end mclapply.hack.R