Should gluon layer support **name** field?

[yangfly]

At present, the name of Gluon layer is automatically extended to xxx/operator0_fwd, based on name_scope, which embodies modularization and avoids naming conflicts. However, the name field is not currently supported, resulting in a lack of flexibility.

for example

gluon.nn.Conv2D(10, 3)  # xxx/conv0_fwd

Should Gluon layer also support custom name like Symbol. Internally, only layers without user defined name are automatically named.

gluon.nn.Conv2D(10, 3, name='conv1')

This feature is useful in the following scenarios

• Gluon models can be aligned with Symbol models or other framework, and users can specify more consistent naming method.
• Gluon models can be compared more intuitively with the net structure in the papers with viz.print_summary or viz.plot_network.
• Symbol model can be load more conveniently from Gluon with load_parameters.

Welcome to this discussion!

[mxnet-label-bot]

Hey, this is the MXNet Label Bot. Thank you for submitting the issue! I will try and suggest some labels so that the appropriate MXNet community members can help resolve it. Here are my recommended labels: Gluon, Feature

[wkcn]

+1. I think it is necessary to support custom name for gluon block. For example, to implement a ResNet model, I would like to name the layers as the paper names. In addition, I have a pre-trained model for MXNet Symbol, and I need the consistent names of parameters to support Gluon Model.

[wkcn]

I try to add name filed for gluon block. However, it is a little complicated.

[eureka7mt]

You could try gluon.nn.Conv2D(10, 3, prefix='conv1_')

[yangfly]

@eureka7mt Thank you for your advice, but there are two drawbacks with prefix=name_.

• Naming conflicts: conv with prefix='conv1_' and the 2th auto-named conv.
• Unnecessary suffix: _fwd

• Perhaps we should set a pythonic prefix '_' for auto-named layers, like _conv1, _pool1, _batchnorm1, which is different from user defined names conv1, pool1 and batchnorm1。And why _fwd is necessary in auto-naming?

[djaym7]

following, request +1