[Autotuner] Installation/ Sanity checks

[luarss]

• Make etc/DependencyInstaller.sh install Autotuner by default.
• Runtime sanity check. If the parameter is not a flow variable, raise a Warning <- should this be an error?

@vvbandeira

[oharboe]

@luarss @maliberty Does this lock down the versions required in the system install for Python?

That would be very bad as it is going to be version hell for other non-OpenROAD requirements on that same machine...

If this is the case, I would recommend not installing into the system but using venv instead. That way autotuner can lock down versions of modules without worrying about non-OpenROAD python requirements.

[luarss]

@oharboe I see. Tentatively I have thought of creating a “supported Python versions” list where we will route dependency installation for corresponding Python versions, but an easy way out is also to make Autotuner optional like you mentioned

[oharboe]

@oharboe I see. Tentatively I have thought of creating a “supported Python versions” list where we will route dependency installation for corresponding Python versions, but an easy way out is also to make Autotuner optional like you mentioned

Are you familiar with venv?

It is designed to easily and robustly solve exactly the problem you are facing, unless I misunderstand.

With venv you create a "light weight installation"(takes at most a few seconds to set up) of Python where you can specify exactly the versions of modules that you want today using requirements.txt without disturbing the system installation.

[luarss]

@oharboe You mean something like this?

#!/bin/bash

venv_name="my_env"
python3 -m venv "$venv_name"
source "$venv_name/bin/activate"
pip install -r requirements.txt
deactivate

[oharboe]

@oharboe You mean something like this?

#!/bin/bash

venv_name="my_env"
python3 -m venv "$venv_name"
source "$venv_name/bin/activate"
pip install -r requirements.txt
deactivate

Yes.

[oharboe]

nit

[oharboe]

Write a unittest with mocking for python code so that it can be regression and implementation tested easily and add to CI.

github copilot/chatgpt will do 95% of the work in my experience.