Add fully automatic argparse argument saving with ArgumentParser

[Copilot]

Users frequently forget to save command-line arguments when using argparse, making it difficult to reproduce scientific experiments.

Changes

• New SimLogger.ArgumentParser class - Custom ArgumentParser that automatically saves arguments when parse_args() is called (fully automatic!)
• setSimTag() function - Sets global simulation tag for automatic saving
• saveArgs() function - Manual saving option that accepts simTag and argparse Namespace, converts to dict, persists via pickle, and logs each argument individually
• Tests - Comprehensive coverage for automatic and manual saving scenarios (6 tests total)
• Documentation - Usage examples in README for both automatic and manual approaches

Usage

Fully Automatic (Recommended)

from SimLogger import SimLogger

# Set tag once
SimLogger.setSimTag('experiment_v1')

# Use SimLogger.ArgumentParser instead of argparse.ArgumentParser
parser = SimLogger.ArgumentParser()
parser.add_argument('--learning_rate', type=float, default=0.001)
parser.add_argument('--epochs', type=int, default=100)

# Arguments are AUTOMATICALLY saved when parse_args() is called!
args = parser.parse_args()

Alternatively, pass simTag directly to the parser:

parser = SimLogger.ArgumentParser(simTag='experiment_v1')
args = parser.parse_args()  # Automatically saved!

Manual Saving

import argparse
from SimLogger import SimLogger

parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
parser.add_argument('--learning_rate', type=float, default=0.001)
args = parser.parse_args()

# Manually save all arguments
SimLogger.saveArgs('experiment_v1', args)

Loading Saved Arguments

# Later: retrieve as dict
loaded = SimLogger.getObj('experiment_v1', 'args')

Arguments are logged individually:

[INFO] ARGS,experiment_v1,saved,data/obj/experiment_v1_args_2024-11-20_18-15-30.pkl
[INFO] ARG,experiment_v1,learning_rate,0.001
[INFO] ARG,experiment_v1,epochs,100

• Fixes Autosave command line args #35

Original prompt

---

This section details on the original issue you should resolve

<issue_title>Autosave command line args</issue_title>
<issue_description>Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
I always forget to save the CLI args when using argparse. Please do it automatically.

</issue_description>

Comments on the Issue (you are @copilot in this section)

• Fixes Autosave command line args #35

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[joey-kilgore]

@copilot The hope was to do this automatically so that when we call parser.parse_args() to automatically save that args to file? is there a way to handle this?

[Copilot]

@copilot The hope was to do this automatically so that when we call parser.parse_args() to automatically save that args to file? is there a way to handle this?

Yes! I've implemented fully automatic saving. Now you can use SimLogger.ArgumentParser instead of argparse.ArgumentParser and arguments are automatically saved when you call parse_args().

Two ways to use it:

Option 1 - Set simTag globally:

from SimLogger import SimLogger

SimLogger.setSimTag('myExperiment')
parser = SimLogger.ArgumentParser()
parser.add_argument('--learning_rate', type=float, default=0.001)
args = parser.parse_args()  # Automatically saved!

Option 2 - Pass simTag to parser:

parser = SimLogger.ArgumentParser(simTag='myExperiment')
args = parser.parse_args()  # Automatically saved!

No need to call saveArgs() manually anymore - it just works when you call parse_args().

Implemented in commit cb97827.