hol353
commented
5 years ago The SaveStateOfObject method has to write the whole simulation structure. This is because each model has a 'Parent' field that will be serialized. Lots of models also have [Links] to the simulations object or DataStore or Summary. All these will be seen by the serialisation engine. I tried nulling all parents and links but this didn't work because many properties rely on the links. I suspect writing the whole of simulation is the only option for the foreseeable future so we should probably get rid of the second argument. The json checkpoint file is around 10 Mb on my computer. They diff quite well.
The remaining points you highlight can all be achieved through the first argument to SaveStateOfObject e.g.
checkpoint.SaveStateOfObject(clock.Today.ToString("yyyy-MM-dd"), Chicory.Phenology);
The first argument is a file name. If you put the clock date as the filename you'll get multiple files that are timestamped and diffable. No overwriting will occur.
HamishBrownPFR
The check pointing concept is potentially very powerful for debugging. Current limitations.
The SaveStateOfObject method writes the full simulation structure if the object argument is an IModel. This means you can't checkpoint subsets of a simulation
It is not possible locate checkpointed chunks in simulation time.
The WriteToFile method creates a new file, overwriting the previous output each time it is called so you can't checkpoint to the same file more than once in a simulation
The JsonConvert.SerializeObject method serializes the whole object including its parents so even if you do specify a specific part of a model to checkpoint, it will ends up checkpointing the whole simulation, making a massive file.