What is CML? Continuous Machine Learning (CML) is an open-source library for implementing continuous integration & delivery (CI/CD) in machine learning projects. Use it to automate parts of your development workflow, including model training and evaluation, comparing ML experiments across your project history, and monitoring changing datasets.

On every pull request, CML helps you automatically train and evaluate models, then generates a visual report with results and metrics. Above, an example report for a neural style transfer model.

We built CML with these principles in mind:

• GitFlow for data science. Use GitLab or GitHub to manage ML experiments, track who trained ML models or modified data and when. Codify data and models with DVC instead of pushing to a Git repo.
• Auto reports for ML experiments. Auto-generate reports with metrics and plots in each Git Pull Request. Rigorous engineering practices help your team make informed, data-driven decisions.
• No additional services. Build your own ML platform using just GitHub or GitLab and your favorite cloud services: AWS, Azure, GCP. No databases, services or complex setup needed.

⁉️ Need help? Just want to chat about continuous integration for ML? Visit our Discord channel!

🌟🌟🌟 Check out our YouTube video series for hands-on MLOps tutorials using CML! 🌟🌟🌟

Table of contents

1. Usage
2. Getting started
3. Using CML with DVC
4. Using self-hosted runners
5. Install CML as a package
6. Examples

Usage

You'll need a GitHub or GitLab account to begin. Users may wish to familiarize themselves with Github Actions or GitLab CI/CD. Here, will discuss the GitHub use case.

⚠️ GitLab users! Please see our docs about configuring CML with GitLab.

🪣 Bitbucket Cloud users We support you, too- see our docs here.🪣 Bitbucket Server support estimated to arrive by January 2021.

The key file in any CML project is .github/workflows/cml.yaml.

name: your-workflow-name
on: [push]
jobs:
  run:
    runs-on: [ubuntu-latest]
    container: docker://dvcorg/cml-py3:latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: 'Train my model'
        env:
          repo_token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
        run: |

          # Your ML workflow goes here
          pip install -r requirements.txt
          python train.py

          # Write your CML report
          cat results.txt >> report.md
          cml-send-comment report.md

CML Functions

CML provides a number of helper functions to help package outputs from ML workflows, such as numeric data and data vizualizations about model performance, into a CML report. The library comes pre-installed on our custom Docker images. In the above example, note the field container: docker://dvcorg/cml-py3:latest specifies the CML Docker image with Python 3 will be pulled by the GitHub Actions runner.

Below is a list of CML functions for writing markdown reports and delivering those reports to your CI system (GitHub Actions or GitLab CI).

Function	Description	Inputs
cml-send-comment	Return CML report as a comment in your GitHub/GitLab workflow.	<path to report> --head-sha <sha>
cml-send-github-check	Return CML report as a check in GitHub	<path to report> --head-sha <sha>
cml-publish	Publish an image for writing to CML report.	<path to image> --title <image title> --md
cml-tensorboard-dev	Return a link to a Tensorboard.dev page	--logdir <path to logs> --title <experiment title> --md

Customizing your CML report

CML reports are written in GitHub Flavored Markdown. That means they can contain images, tables, formatted text, HTML blocks, code snippets and more - really, what you put in a CML report is up to you. Some examples:

📝 Text. Write to your report using whatever method you prefer. For example, copy the contents of a text file containing the results of ML model training:

cat results.txt >> report.md

🖼️ Images Display images using the markdown or HTML. Note that if an image is an output of your ML workflow (i.e., it is produced by your workflow), you will need to use the cml-publish function to include it a CML report. For example, if graph.png is the output of my workflow python train.py, run:

cml-publish graph.png --md >> report.md

Getting started

1. Fork our example project repository. ⚠️ Note that if you are using GitLab, you will need to create a Personal Access Token for this example to work.

The following steps can all be done in the GitHub browser interface. However, to follow along the commands, we recommend cloning your fork to your local workstation:

git clone https://github.com/<your-username>/example_cml

2. To create a CML workflow, copy the following into a new file, .github/workflows/cml.yaml:

name: model-training
on: [push]
jobs:
  run:
    runs-on: [ubuntu-latest]
    container: docker://dvcorg/cml-py3:latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: 'Train my model'
        env:
          repo_token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
        run: |
          pip install -r requirements.txt
          python train.py

          cat metrics.txt >> report.md
          cml-publish confusion_matrix.png --md >> report.md
          cml-send-comment report.md

4. In your text editor of choice, edit line 16 of train.py to depth = 5.

5. Commit and push the changes:

git checkout -b experiment
git add . && git commit -m "modify forest depth"
git push origin experiment

6. In GitHub, open up a Pull Request to compare the experiment branch to master.

Shortly, you should see a comment from github-actions appear in the Pull Request with your CML report. This is a result of the function cml-send-comment in your workflow.

This is the gist of the CML workflow: when you push changes to your GitHub repository, the workflow in your .github/workflows/cml.yaml file gets run and a report generated. CML functions let you display relevant results from the workflow, like model performance metrics and vizualizations, in GitHub checks and comments. What kind of workflow you want to run, and want to put in your CML report, is up to you.

Using CML with DVC

In many ML projects, data isn't stored in a Git repository and needs to be downloaded from external sources. DVC is a common way to bring data to your CML runner. DVC also lets you visualize how metrics differ between commits to make reports like this:

The .github/workflows/cml.yaml file to create this report is:

name: model-training
on: [push]
jobs:
  run:
    runs-on: [ubuntu-latest]
    container: docker://dvcorg/cml-py3:latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: 'Train my model'
        shell: bash
        env:
          repo_token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
          AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID: ${{ secrets.AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID }}
          AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY: ${{ secrets.AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY }}
        run: |
          # Install requirements
          pip install -r requirements.txt

          # Pull data & run-cache from S3 and reproduce pipeline
          dvc pull data --run-cache
          dvc repro

          # Report metrics
          echo "## Metrics" >> report.md
          git fetch --prune
          dvc metrics diff master --show-md >> report.md

          # Publish confusion matrix diff
          echo -e "## Plots\n### Class confusions" >> report.md
          dvc plots diff --target classes.csv --template confusion -x actual -y predicted --show-vega master > vega.json
          vl2png vega.json -s 1.5 | cml-publish --md >> report.md

          # Publish regularization function diff
          echo "### Effects of regularization\n" >> report.md
          dvc plots diff --target estimators.csv -x Regularization --show-vega master > vega.json
          vl2png vega.json -s 1.5 | cml-publish --md >> report.md

          cml-send-comment report.md

If you're using DVC with cloud storage, take note of environmental variables for your storage format.

Environmental variables for supported cloud providers

S3 and S3 compatible storage (Minio, DigitalOcean Spaces, IBM Cloud Object Storage...)

# Github
env:
  AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID: ${{ secrets.AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID }}
  AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY: ${{ secrets.AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY }}
  AWS_SESSION_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.AWS_SESSION_TOKEN }}

👉 AWS_SESSION_TOKEN is optional.

Azure

env:
  AZURE_STORAGE_CONNECTION_STRING:
    ${{ secrets.AZURE_STORAGE_CONNECTION_STRING }}
  AZURE_STORAGE_CONTAINER_NAME: ${{ secrets.AZURE_STORAGE_CONTAINER_NAME }}

Aliyun

env:
  OSS_BUCKET: ${{ secrets.OSS_BUCKET }}
  OSS_ACCESS_KEY_ID: ${{ secrets.OSS_ACCESS_KEY_ID }}
  OSS_ACCESS_KEY_SECRET: ${{ secrets.OSS_ACCESS_KEY_SECRET }}
  OSS_ENDPOINT: ${{ secrets.OSS_ENDPOINT }}

Google Storage

⚠️ Normally, GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS points to the path of the json file that contains the credentials. However in the action this variable CONTAINS the content of the file. Copy that json and add it as a secret.

env:
  GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS: ${{ secrets.GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS }}

Google Drive

⚠️ After configuring your Google Drive credentials you will find a json file at your_project_path/.dvc/tmp/gdrive-user-credentials.json. Copy that json and add it as a secret.

env:
  GDRIVE_CREDENTIALS_DATA: ${{ secrets.GDRIVE_CREDENTIALS_DATA }}

Using self-hosted runners

GitHub Actions are run on GitHub-hosted runners by default. However, there are many great reasons to use your own runners: to take advantage of GPUs; to orchestrate your team's shared computing resources, or to train in the cloud.

☝️ Tip! Check out the official GitHub documentation to get started setting up your self-hosted runner.

Allocating cloud resources with CML

When a workflow requires computational resources (such as GPUs) CML can automatically allocate cloud instances using cml-runner. You can spin up instances on your AWS or Azure account (GCP support is forthcoming!).

For example, the following workflow deploys a t2.micro instance on AWS EC2 and trains a model on the instance. After the job runs, the instance automatically shuts down. You might notice that this workflow is quite similar to the basic use case highlighted in the beginning of the docs- that's because it is! What's new is that we've added cml-runner, plus a few environmental variables for passing your cloud service credentials to the workflow.

name: "Train-in-the-cloud"
on: [push]

jobs:
  deploy-runner:
    runs-on: [ubuntu-latest]
    steps:
      - uses: iterative/setup-cml@v1
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: "Deploy runner on EC2"
        shell: bash
        env:
          repo_token: ${{ secrets.PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN }}
          AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID: ${{ secrets.AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID }}
          AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY: ${{ secrets.AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY }}
        run: |
          cml-runner \
          --cloud aws \
          --cloud-region us-west \
          --cloud-type=t2.micro \
          --labels=cml-runner
  name: model-training
    needs: deploy-runner
    runs-on: [self-hosted,cml-runner]
    container: docker://dvcorg/cml-py3:latest
    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v2
    - name: "Train my model"
      env:
        repo_token: ${{ secrets.PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN }}
      run: |
        pip install -r requirements.txt
        python train.py
        # Publish report with CML
        cat metrics.txt > report.md
        cml-send-comment report.md

In the above workflow, the step deploy-runner launches an EC2 t2-micro instance in the us-west region. The next step, model-training, runs on the newly launched instance.

Note that you can use any container with this workflow! While you must have CML and its dependencies setup to use CML functions like cml-send-comment from your instance, you can create your favorite training environment in the cloud by pulling the Docker container of your choice.

We like the CML container (docker://dvcorg/cml-py3) because it comes loaded with Python, CUDA, git, node and other essentials for full-stack data science. But we don't mind if you do it your way :)

Arguments

The function cml-runner accepts the following arguments:

Usage: cml-runner.js

Options:
  --version               Show version number                          [boolean]
  --labels                Comma delimited runner labels         [default: "cml"]
  --idle-timeout          Time in seconds for the runner to be waiting for jobs
                          before shutting down. 0 waits forever.  [default: 300]
  --name                  Name displayed in the repo once registered
                                                     [default: "cml-w0qj7mvsz5"]
  --single                If specified, exit after running a single job.
                                                      [boolean] [default: false]
  --reuse                 If specified, don't spawn a new runner if there is a
                          registed runner with the given labels.
                                                      [boolean] [default: false]
  --driver                     If not specify it infers it from the ENV.
                                                   [choices: "github", "gitlab"]
  --repo                       Specifies the repo to be used. If not specified
                               is extracted from the CI ENV.
  --token                      Personal access token to be used. If not
                               specified in extracted from ENV.
  --cloud                      Cloud to deploy the runner
                                                       [choices: "aws", "azure"]
  --cloud-region               Region where the instance is deployed.
                               Choices:[us-east, us-west, eu-west, eu-north].
                               Also accepts native cloud regions.
                                                            [default: "us-west"]
  --cloud-type                 Instance type. Choices: [m, l, xl]. Also supports
                               native types like i.e. t2.micro
  --cloud-gpu                  GPU type.      [choices: "nogpu", "k80", "tesla"]
  --cloud-hdd-size             HDD size in GB.
  --cloud-ssh-private          Your private RSA SSH key. If not provided will be
                               generated by the Terraform-provider-Iterative.
                                                                   [default: ""]
  --cloud-ssh-private-visible  Your SSH key will be visible in the output with
                               the rest of the instance properties.    [boolean]
  --cloud-spot                 Request a spot instance                 [boolean]
  --cloud-spot-price           Spot max price. If not specified it takes current
                               spot bidding pricing.             [default: "-1"]
  -h                           Show help                               [boolean]

Environmental variables

You will need to create a personal access token with repository read/write access and workflow privileges. In the example workflow, this token is stored as PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN.

Note that you will also need to provide access credentials for your cloud compute resources as secrets. In the above example, AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID and AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY are required to deploy EC2 instances.

Please see our docs about environmental variables needed to authenticate with supported cloud services.

Using on-premise machines as self-hosted runners

You can also use the new cml-runner function to set up a local self-hosted runner. On your local machine or on-premise GPU cluster, you'll install CML as a package and then run:

cml-runner \
    --repo $your_project_repository_url \
    --token=$personal_access_token \
    --labels tf \
    --idle-timeout 180

Now your machine will be listening for workflows from your project repository.

Install CML as a package

In the above examples, CML is pre-installed in a custom Docker image, which is pulled by a CI runner. You can also install CML as a package:

npm i -g @dvcorg/cml

You may need to install additional dependencies to use DVC plots and Vega-Lite CLI commands:

sudo apt-get install -y libcairo2-dev libpango1.0-dev libjpeg-dev libgif-dev \
          librsvg2-dev libfontconfig-dev
npm install -g vega-cli vega-lite

CML and Vega-Lite package installation require npm command from Node package. Below you can find how to install Node.

Install Node in GitHub

In GitHub there is a special action for NPM installation:

uses: actions/setup-node@v1
  with:
    node-version: '12'

Install Node in GitLab

GitLab requires direct installation of the NMP package:

curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_12.x | bash
apt-get update
apt-get install -y nodejs

A library of CML projects

Here are some example projects using CML.

• Basic CML project
• CML with DVC to pull data
• CML with Tensorboard
• CML with a small EC2 instance
• CML with EC2 GPU