Sharing Cassini Notebooks

You may find that you need to share a notebook with a collegue. Unless they have an identical file system to you, without making a number of changes to the notebook, they will not be able to run the notebook as-is.

To help make this easier, in version 0.3.0, Cassini provides the cassini.sharing module, which includes the ShareableProject class.

Warning

This feature is both new and complex. Whilst it's unit-tested, it is not yet field tested, so you may encounter bugs and issues. Please report them, so we can iron them out!

To share a notebook, you need to make a small number of changes at the top of the file.

Imagine your notebook starts with:

from cas_project import project

smpl = project.env('WP1.1a')
smpl.gui.header()

To share it, make the substitution of project for a ShareableProject instance:

# from cas_project import project
from cassini.sharing import SharableProject

project = ShareableProject()
smpl = project.env('WP1.1a')
smpl.gui.header()

When you re-run this cell, you should see nothing changes! What has happened behind the scences is Cassini has wrapped smpl with a SharingTier:

>>> smpl
<SharingTier>
>>> smpl._tier
<Sample 'WP1.1a'>

This object passes all calls back to the original wrapped smpl object, but it keeps track of them, as you go along.

>>> smpl / 'a path.csv'
<NoseyPath (...\WorkPackages\WP2\a path.csv)>
>>> smpl._called['__truediv__']
{(('data.csv',),
  ()): WindowsPath('.../WorkPackages/WP2/a path.csv')}

So proceede to re-run every cell in your notebook.

Once you've ran through your whole notebook, to get it ready for sharing, you need to run the line:

>>> project.make_shared()
Creating shared directory: Shared
Success
Making Requires directory
Success
Creating shared version of WP1.1a
Copying Meta
Success
Freezing attributes/ calls
Success
Making a copy of required files

This creates a new subdirectory called Shared. In that, Cassini will create a Required folder, which Cassini will fill with all the files you accessed throughout the notebook.

In Shared it will also create a directory called WP1.1a, within which, Cassini will place a copy of WP1.1a's meta and a cache of the result of any calls and attribute accesses.

To share your notebook. Send it alongside the Shared folder, and ensure your collegue also has Cassini installed.

When they come to run the notebook, Cassini will recognise it is in a Shared environment, and will divert all calls, attribute access and path access to the accompanying Shared folder, meaning your colleague can re-run your notebook as-is without copying over any other files.