Minimalist Async Evaluation Framework for R • mirai

Minimalist async evaluation framework for R.

Lightweight parallel code execution and distributed computing.

Designed for simplicity, a ‘mirai’ evaluates an R expression asynchronously, on local or network resources, resolving automatically upon completion.

Features efficient task scheduling, fast inter-process communications, and Transport Layer Security over TCP/IP for remote connections, courtesy of ‘nanonext’ and ‘NNG’ (Nanomsg Next Gen).

mirai() returns a ‘mirai’ object immediately. ‘mirai’ (未来みらい) is Japanese for ‘future’.

mirai has a tiny pure R code base, relying solely on nanonext, a high-performance binding for the ‘NNG’ (Nanomsg Next Gen) C library with zero package dependencies.

Installation
Example 1: Compute-intensive Operations
Example 2: I/O-bound Operations
Example 3: Resilient Pipelines
Daemons: Local Persistent Processes
Distributed Computing: Remote Daemons
Distributed Computing: TLS Secure Connections
Compute Profiles
Errors, Interrupts and Timeouts
Integrations with Crew, Targets, Shiny
Thanks
Links

Installation

Install the latest release from CRAN:

install.packages("mirai")

or the development version from rOpenSci R-universe:

install.packages("mirai", repos = "https://shikokuchuo.r-universe.dev")

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Example 1: Compute-intensive Operations

Use case: minimise execution times by performing long-running tasks concurrently in separate processes.

Multiple long computes (model fits etc.) can be performed in parallel on available computing cores.

Use mirai() to evaluate an expression asynchronously in a separate, clean R process.

A ‘mirai’ object is returned immediately.

library(mirai)

m <- mirai(
  {
    res <- rnorm(n) + m
    res / rev(res)
  },
  m = runif(1),
  n = 1e8
)

m
#> < mirai >
#>  - $data for evaluated result

Above, all specified name = value pairs are passed through to the ‘mirai’.

The ‘mirai’ yields an ‘unresolved’ logical NA whilst the async operation is ongoing.

m$data
#> 'unresolved' logi NA

Upon completion, the ‘mirai’ resolves automatically to the evaluated result.

m$data |> str()
#>  num [1:100000000] 0.601 2.251 -0.47 0.296 0.271 ...

Alternatively, explicitly call and wait for the result using call_mirai().

call_mirai(m)$data |> str()
#>  num [1:100000000] 0.601 2.251 -0.47 0.296 0.271 ...

For easy programmatic use of mirai(), ‘.expr’ accepts a pre-constructed language object, and also a list of named arguments passed via ‘.args’. So, the following would be equivalent to the above:

expr <- quote({
  res <- rnorm(n) + m
  res / rev(res)
})

args <- list(m = runif(1), n = 1e8)

m <- mirai(.expr = expr, .args = args)

call_mirai(m)$data |> str()
#>  num [1:100000000] 6.42 3.24 0.64 2.76 1.39 ...

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Example 2: I/O-bound Operations

Use case: ensure execution flow of the main process is not blocked.

High-frequency real-time data cannot be written to file/database synchronously without disrupting the execution flow.

Cache data in memory and use mirai() to perform periodic write operations concurrently in a separate process.

Below, ‘.args’ is used to pass a list of objects already present in the calling environment to the mirai by name. This is an alternative use of ‘.args’, and may be combined with ... to also pass in name = value pairs.

library(mirai)

x <- rnorm(1e6)
file <- tempfile()

m <- mirai(write.csv(x, file = file), .args = list(x, file))

A ‘mirai’ object is returned immediately.

unresolved() may be used in control flow statements to perform actions which depend on resolution of the ‘mirai’, both before and after.

This means there is no need to actually wait (block) for a ‘mirai’ to resolve, as the example below demonstrates.

# unresolved() queries for resolution itself so no need to use it again within the while loop

while (unresolved(m)) {
  cat("while unresolved\n")
  Sys.sleep(0.5)
}
#> while unresolved
#> while unresolved

cat("Write complete:", is.null(m$data))
#> Write complete: TRUE

Now actions which depend on the resolution may be processed, for example the next write.

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Example 3: Resilient Pipelines

Use case: isolating code that can potentially fail in a separate process to ensure continued uptime.

As part of a data science / machine learning pipeline, iterations of model training may periodically fail for stochastic and uncontrollable reasons (e.g. buggy memory management on graphics cards).

Running each iteration in a ‘mirai’ isolates this potentially-problematic code such that even if it does fail, it does not bring down the entire pipeline.

library(mirai)

run_iteration <- function(i) {
  
  if (runif(1) < 0.1) stop("random error\n", call. = FALSE) # simulates a stochastic error rate
  sprintf("iteration %d successful\n", i)
  
}

for (i in 1:10) {
  
  m <- mirai(run_iteration(i), .args = list(run_iteration, i))
  while (is_error_value(call_mirai(m)$data)) {
    cat(m$data)
    m <- mirai(run_iteration(i), .args = list(run_iteration, i))
  }
  cat(m$data)
  
}
#> iteration 1 successful
#> iteration 2 successful
#> iteration 3 successful
#> iteration 4 successful
#> iteration 5 successful
#> iteration 6 successful
#> iteration 7 successful
#> iteration 8 successful
#> iteration 9 successful
#> Error: random error
#> iteration 10 successful

Further, by testing the return value of each ‘mirai’ for errors, error-handling code is then able to automate recovery and re-attempts, as in the above example. Further details on error handling can be found in the section below.

The end result is a resilient and fault-tolerant pipeline that minimises downtime by eliminating interruptions of long computes.

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Daemons: Local Persistent Processes

Daemons, or persistent background processes, may be set to receive ‘mirai’ requests.

This is potentially more efficient as new processes no longer need to be created on an ad hoc basis.

With Dispatcher (default)

Call daemons() specifying the number of daemons to launch.

daemons(6)
#> [1] 6

To view the current status, status() provides the number of active connections along with a matrix of statistics for each daemon.

status()
#> $connections
#> [1] 1
#> 
#> $daemons
#>                                     i online instance assigned complete
#> abstract://988b6c5548b89873daae7d6b 1      1        1        0        0
#> abstract://f968e887dd6aafb09af3f9ec 2      1        1        0        0
#> abstract://285a8ea0c175ea5b676ebca8 3      1        1        0        0
#> abstract://f1b2bcd7f93e7fb829970f23 4      1        1        0        0
#> abstract://6e16a65c5b1764e6a4431e4b 5      1        1        0        0
#> abstract://3843671f338e8c28f8c469ad 6      1        1        0        0

The default dispatcher = TRUE creates a dispatcher() background process that connects to individual daemon processes on the local machine. This ensures that tasks are dispatched efficiently on a first-in first-out (FIFO) basis to daemons for processing. Tasks are queued at the dispatcher and sent to a daemon as soon as it can accept the task for immediate execution.

Dispatcher uses synchronisation primitives from nanonext, waiting upon rather than polling for tasks, which is efficient both in terms of consuming no resources while waiting, and also being fully synchronised with events (having no latency).

daemons(0)
#> [1] 0

Set the number of daemons to zero to reset. This reverts to the default of creating a new background process for each ‘mirai’ request.

Without Dispatcher

Alternatively, specifying dispatcher = FALSE, the background daemons connect directly to the host process.

daemons(6, dispatcher = FALSE)
#> [1] 6

Requesting the status now shows 6 connections, along with the host URL at $daemons.

status()
#> $connections
#> [1] 6
#> 
#> $daemons
#> [1] "abstract://3a21cdc05821276862216ae1"

This implementation sends tasks immediately, and ensures that tasks are evenly-distributed amongst daemons. This means that optimal scheduling is not guaranteed as the duration of tasks cannot be known a priori. As an example, tasks could be queued at a daemon behind a long-running task, whilst other daemons remain idle.

The advantage of this approach is that it is low-level and does not require an additional dispatcher process. It is well-suited to working with similar-length tasks, or where the number of concurrent tasks typically does not exceed available daemons.

daemons(0)
#> [1] 0

Set the number of daemons to zero to reset.

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Distributed Computing: Remote Daemons

The daemons interface may also be used to send tasks for computation to remote daemon processes on the network.

Call daemons() specifying ‘url’ as a character string the host network address and a port that is able to accept incoming connections.

The examples below use an illustrative local network IP address of ‘10.75.37.40’.

A port on the host machine also needs to be open and available for inbound connections from the local network, illustratively ‘5555’ in the examples below.

IPv6 addresses are also supported and must be enclosed in square brackets [] to avoid confusion with the final colon separating the port. For example, port 5555 on the IPv6 address ::ffff:a6f:50d would be specified as tcp://[::ffff:a6f:50d]:5555.

Connecting to Remote Daemons Through Dispatcher

The default dispatcher = TRUE creates a background dispatcher() process on the local machine, which listens to a vector of URLs that remote daemon() processes dial in to, with each daemon having its own unique URL.

It is recommended to use a websocket URL starting ws:// instead of TCP in this scenario (used interchangeably with tcp://). A websocket URL supports a path after the port number, which can be made unique for each daemon. In this way a dispatcher can connect to an arbitrary number of daemons over a single port.

daemons(n = 4, url = "ws://10.75.37.40:5555")
#> [1] 4

Above, a single URL was supplied, along with n = 4 to specify that the dispatcher should listen at 4 URLs. In such a case, an integer sequence is automatically appended to the path /1 through /4 to produce these URLs.

Alternatively, supplying a vector of URLs allows the use of arbitrary port numbers / paths, e.g.:

daemons(url = c("ws://10.75.37.40:5566/cpu", "ws://10.75.37.40:5566/gpu", "ws://10.75.37.40:7788/1"))

Above, ‘n’ is not specified, in which case its value is inferred from the length of the ‘url’ vector supplied.

–

On the remote resource, daemon() may be called from an R session, or directly from a shell using Rscript. Each daemon instance should dial into one of the unique URLs that the dispatcher is listening at:

Rscript -e 'mirai::daemon("ws://10.75.37.40:5555/1")'
Rscript -e 'mirai::daemon("ws://10.75.37.40:5555/2")'
Rscript -e 'mirai::daemon("ws://10.75.37.40:5555/3")'
Rscript -e 'mirai::daemon("ws://10.75.37.40:5555/4")'

Note that daemons() should be set up on the host machine before launching daemon() on remote resources, otherwise the daemon instances will exit if a connection is not immediately available. Alternatively, specifying daemon(asyncdial = TRUE) will allow daemons to wait (indefinitely) for a connection to become available.

launch_remote() may also be used to launch daemons directly on a remote machine. For example, if the remote machine at 10.75.37.100 accepts SSH connections over port 22:

launch_remote(1:4, command = "ssh", args = c("-p 22 10.75.37.100", .))
#> [1] "Rscript -e \"mirai::daemon('ws://10.75.37.40:5555/1',rs=c(10407,234847007,-1443550508,-1219227707,585277890,326394459,-544448032))\""
#> [2] "Rscript -e \"mirai::daemon('ws://10.75.37.40:5555/2',rs=c(10407,855496323,1126561919,560666770,141328549,1513462613,-349875403))\""  
#> [3] "Rscript -e \"mirai::daemon('ws://10.75.37.40:5555/3',rs=c(10407,1901043322,1483328582,81985270,1276055119,-1503907136,-404210225))\""
#> [4] "Rscript -e \"mirai::daemon('ws://10.75.37.40:5555/4',rs=c(10407,668343214,-722105549,-1445000249,515588687,1646507310,1828364408))\""

The returned vector comprises the shell commands executed on the remote machine.

–

Requesting status, on the host machine:

status()
#> $connections
#> [1] 1
#> 
#> $daemons
#>                         i online instance assigned complete
#> ws://10.75.37.40:5555/1 1      1        1        0        0
#> ws://10.75.37.40:5555/2 2      1        1        0        0
#> ws://10.75.37.40:5555/3 3      1        1        0        0
#> ws://10.75.37.40:5555/4 4      1        1        0        0

As per the local case, $connections shows the single connection to dispatcher, however $daemons now provides a matrix of statistics for the remote daemons.

i index number.
online shows as 1 when there is an active connection, or else 0 if a daemon has yet to connect or has disconnected.
instance increments by 1 every time there is a new connection at a URL. This counter is designed to track new daemon instances connecting after previous ones have ended (due to time-outs etc.). The count becomes negative immediately after a URL is regenerated by saisei(), but increments again once a new daemon connects.
assigned shows the cumulative number of tasks assigned to the daemon.
complete shows the cumulative number of tasks completed by the daemon.

Dispatcher automatically adjusts to the number of daemons actually connected. Hence it is possible to dynamically scale up or down the number of daemons according to requirements (limited to the ‘n’ URLs assigned).

To reset all connections and revert to default behaviour:

daemons(0)
#> [1] 0

Closing the connection causes the dispatcher to exit automatically, and in turn all connected daemons when their respective connections with the dispatcher are terminated.

Connecting to Remote Daemons Directly

By specifying dispatcher = FALSE, remote daemons connect directly to the host process. The host listens at a single URL, and distributes tasks to all connected daemons.

daemons(url = "tcp://10.75.37.40:0", dispatcher = FALSE)

Alternatively, simply supply a colon followed by the port number to listen on all interfaces on the local host, for example:

daemons(url = "tcp://:0", dispatcher = FALSE)
#> [1] "tcp://:35989"

Note that above, the port number is specified as zero. This is a wildcard value that will automatically cause a free ephemeral port to be assigned. The actual assigned port is provided in the return value of the call, or it may be queried at any time via status().

–

On the network resource, daemon() may be called from an R session, or an Rscript invocation from a shell. This sets up a remote daemon process that connects to the host URL and receives tasks:

Rscript -e 'mirai::daemon("tcp://10.75.37.40:35989")'

launch_remote() may also be used to launch daemons directly on a remote machine. For example, if the remote machine at 10.75.37.100 accepts SSH connections over port 22:

launch_remote("tcp://10.75.37.40:35989", command = "ssh", args = c("-p 22 10.75.37.100", .))
#> [1] "Rscript -e \"mirai::daemon('tcp://10.75.37.40:35989',rs=c(10407,-1375240495,1010969182,-947866809,-26137892,-1431798227,-1249750262))\""

The returned vector comprises the shell commands executed on the remote machine.

–

The number of daemons connecting to the host URL is not limited and network resources may be added or removed at any time, with tasks automatically distributed to all connected daemons.

$connections will show the actual number of connected daemons.

status()
#> $connections
#> [1] 1
#> 
#> $daemons
#> [1] "tcp://:35989"

To reset all connections and revert to default behaviour:

daemons(0)
#> [1] 0

This causes all connected daemons to exit automatically.

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Distributed Computing: TLS Secure Connections

TLS is available as an option to secure communications from the local machine to remote daemons.

Zero-configuration

An automatic zero-configuration default is implemented. Simply specify a secure URL of the form wss:// or tls+tcp:// when setting daemons. For example, on the IPv6 loopback address:

daemons(n = 4, url = "wss://[::1]:5555")
#> [1] 4

Single-use keys and certificates are automatically generated and configured, without requiring any further intervention. The private key is always retained on the host machine and never transmitted.

The generated self-signed certificate is available via launch_remote(). This function conveniently constructs the full shell command to launch a daemon, including the correctly specified ‘tls’ argument to daemon().

launch_remote(1)
#> [1] "Rscript -e \"mirai::daemon('wss://[::1]:5555/1',tls=c('-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----\nMIIFLTCCAxWgAwIBAgIBATANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQsFADAuMQwwCgYDVQQDDAM6OjEx\nETAPBgNVBAoMCE5hbm9uZXh0MQswCQYDVQQGEwJKUDAeFw0wMTAxMDEwMDAwMDBa\nFw0zMDEyMzEyMzU5NTlaMC4xDDAKBgNVBAMMAzo6MTERMA8GA1UECgwITmFub25l\neHQxCzAJBgNVBAYTAkpQMIICIjANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQEFAAOCAg8AMIICCgKCAgEA\nxx5G9OjsMAUgfKcggxLOUVWdC6sdlCQzDbzOrvEHghwphkt924pYaNgS8UKMnb46\nUFPCPfv1YtJEaUR87hLXBASnAHqvs4akXvyByI2LIREz58/q46wRbuzJq9OnbdiO\nOkcMKX423p5pRNmAbXMsJK3gPgTnr6rd54R4O8a34Dw1ZRdGKXXYYChs/CYrs4bf\niMj9RUBUGYdw24KzAybdaMTMqpysIM5D3K6sGY41n5E7ElSCfrNergpIZ9sG4okK\nekTof8EOrQSJIJ7ni+NeH3rYmcmaD9cgFtyWdPuuHWBfcWcHu6TKlM18GstKw45g\nQTUE79N2/5cnsUc9qq0ce7XaSkwdyvS1pyxaahrIft2fsttWN6v3BlHeoWs/VCRr\nEkPPMJtAJK1dql73l8m0a9siYu7ScKkY0TlKac5AFcQyfL8Tkcj9EtGTj6jxTqOP\ns5RrjehvNABdNQhCq5znmoedVuNBN9oNkQKGuKb5Tsj320oEwtgccXrIZDbmsWyZ\ne0S1EJYo4PWBM63xnlJpcwg5IOd8MFfflfjLCYU+LUnIR1ynKcAChrebNYn4+vBd\njNHjK2Ka0cFOpEl8M4YUV1acK0wjn6A8lHqXhqewihGzNJnZsI8Ltl7MP6oZL6kx\nKWHi99P6PNqCKXQNui8lPzzXuhuCP/TCmIoufN23OaUCAwEAAaNWMFQwEgYDVR0T\nAQH/BAgwBgEB/wIBADAdBgNVHQ4EFgQU2onzopjVaToXnhSPej8sfKIBRJAwHwYD\nVR0jBBgwFoAU2onzopjVaToXnhSPej8sfKIBRJAwDQYJKoZIhvcNAQELBQADggIB\nADWe5WSIMpj9dvOkb/mPx0DP+XIlHwh2FF9M1CDU20Tal2CikIFmbcXv4H27TCyg\nepB3Y++UNrptl00RwAkd/HywRXSZv053UOFqPs0BEp+kIH7lI1Ouv9adohD+f/QL\nLMFntX7Rgh4UML55hcLK2DyeMRUKlxrjtizB3eo2iZQJ71iFNO0VUbRfqboZcBol\nNIL+InGNoMbhqRecCPfg5RPsQmsp/SVAsuNa3v01A9fBsmz6O0C4C77j62gk4nUt\nPi3YU8zuoHDFuQcjHPRxt2o5svVxxxneGpmqgFg71uuLGesxa/HfOuQc9aO3kaDI\nvZKyAC0Kg/0hkEA5mNI7BGUrMSeTE4virjL+D8iiej7VpR2nntWbJhNWZamAgSZs\nFw9o2lCP17m978hk8YWSWfgG81QBkQoDEANMq5EY+fp6+G6CLs0gIRJSo289xwcT\n2TbPj8/KBJBbSZdWTd8xwtaqwg8YO/dx3OJG1k+hEcGnic9WhvE6Z5LzIm+kZPc3\nC7HjyOJYkoxqjB8SR4l3u1fmn3QX7jlcOhMj0SKXOLGFwztlehk9LPfBhuYQUtqG\n7XcBBcfqtcTS5KDXkHzuC9zTdFwerozW5hygY0KoAfTYHdjM6CmVmtVBvJ6PvuNn\nG6hl03vdqrp9FOis/D4fTxhtRqQbOBmnY1E2lNIWHrl5\n-----END CERTIFICATE-----\n',''),rs=c(10407,-885815674,-593655985,827546948,415376245,-759671374,1873324427))\""

The return value may be deployed manually on a remote machine by unescaping the double quotes around the call to "mirai::daemon()", or directly via SSH or a resource manager by additionally specifying ‘command’ and ‘args’ to launch_remote().

CA Signed Certificates

As an alternative to the zero-configuration option, a certificate may also be generated via a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) to a Certificate Authority (CA), which may be a public CA or a CA internal to your organisation.

Generate a private key and CSR. The following resources describe how to do so:

using Mbed TLS: https://mbed-tls.readthedocs.io/en/latest/kb/how-to/generate-a-certificate-request-csr/
using OpenSSL: https://www.feistyduck.com/library/openssl-cookbook/online/ (Chapter 1.2 Key and Certificate Management)

Send or provide the generated CSR to the CA for it to sign a new TLS certificate.

The received certificate should comprise a block of cipher text between the markers -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE----- and -----END CERTIFICATE-----. Make sure to request the certificate in the PEM format. If only available in other formats, your TLS library should usually provide conversion utilities.
Check also that your private key is a block of cipher text between the markers -----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY----- and -----END PRIVATE KEY-----.

When setting daemons, the TLS certificate and private key should be provided to the ‘tls’ argument of daemons().

If the certificate and private key have been imported as character strings cert and key respectively, then the ‘tls’ argument may be specified as the character vector c(cert, key).
Alternatively, the certificate may be copied to a new text file, with the private key appended, in which case the path/filename of this new file may be provided to the ‘tls’ argument.

When launching daemons, the certificate chain to the CA should be supplied to the ‘tls’ argument of daemon() or launch_remote().

The certificate chain should comprise multiple certificates, each between -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE----- and -----END CERTIFICATE----- markers. The first one should be the newly-generated TLS certificate, the same supplied to daemons(), and the final one should be a CA root certificate.
These are the only certificates required if your certificate was signed directly by a CA. If not, then the intermediate certificates should be included in a certificate chain that starts with your TLS certificate and ends with the certificate of the CA.
If these are concatenated together as a single character string certchain (and assuming no certificate revocation list), then the character vector c(certchain, "") may be supplied to the relevant ‘tls’ argument.
Alternatively, if these are written to a file (and the file replicated on the remote machines), then the ‘tls’ argument may also be specified as a path/filename (assuming these are the same on each machine).

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Compute Profiles

The daemons() interface also allows the specification of compute profiles for managing tasks with heterogeneous compute requirements:

send tasks to different daemons or clusters of daemons with the appropriate specifications (in terms of CPUs / memory / GPU / accelerators etc.)
split tasks between local and remote computation

Simply specify the argument .compute when calling daemons() with a profile name (which is ‘default’ for the default profile). The daemons settings are saved under the named profile.

To create a ‘mirai’ task using a specific compute profile, specify the ‘.compute’ argument to mirai(), which defaults to the ‘default’ compute profile.

Similarly, functions such as status(), launch_local() or launch_remote() should be specified with the desired ‘.compute’ argument.

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Errors, Interrupts and Timeouts

If execution in a mirai fails, the error message is returned as a character string of class ‘miraiError’ and ‘errorValue’ to facilitate debugging. is_mirai_error() may be used to test for mirai execution errors.

m1 <- mirai(stop("occurred with a custom message", call. = FALSE))
call_mirai(m1)$data
#> 'miraiError' chr Error: occurred with a custom message

m2 <- mirai(mirai::mirai())
call_mirai(m2)$data
#> 'miraiError' chr Error in mirai::mirai(): missing expression, perhaps wrap in {}?

is_mirai_error(m2$data)
#> [1] TRUE
is_error_value(m2$data)
#> [1] TRUE

If a daemon instance is sent a user interrupt, the mirai will resolve to an empty character string of class ‘miraiInterrupt’ and ‘errorValue’. is_mirai_interrupt() may be used to test for such interrupts.

is_mirai_interrupt(m2$data)
#> [1] FALSE

If execution of a mirai surpasses the timeout set via the ‘.timeout’ argument, the mirai will resolve to an ‘errorValue’. This can, amongst other things, guard against mirai processes that have the potential to hang and never return.

m3 <- mirai(nanonext::msleep(1000), .timeout = 500)
call_mirai(m3)$data
#> 'errorValue' int 5 | Timed out

is_mirai_error(m3$data)
#> [1] FALSE
is_mirai_interrupt(m3$data)
#> [1] FALSE
is_error_value(m3$data)
#> [1] TRUE

is_error_value() tests for all mirai execution errors, user interrupts and timeouts.

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Integrations with Crew, Targets, Shiny

The crew package is a distributed worker-launcher that provides an R6-based interface extending mirai to different distributed computing platforms, from traditional clusters to cloud services. The crew.cluster package is a plug-in that enables mirai-based workflows on traditional high-performance computing clusters using LFS, PBS/TORQUE, SGE and SLURM.

targets, a Make-like pipeline tool for statistics and data science, has integrated and adopted crew as its predominant high-performance computing backend.

mirai can also serve as the backend for enterprise asynchronous shiny applications in one of two ways:

mirai.promises, which enables a ‘mirai’ to be used interchangeably with a ‘promise’ in shiny or plumber pipelines; or
crew provides an interface that makes it easy to deploy mirai for shiny. The package provides a Shiny vignette with tutorial and sample code for this purpose.

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Thanks

We would like to thank in particular:

William Landau, for being instrumental in shaping development of the package, from initiating the original request for persistent daemons, through to orchestrating robustness testing for the high performance computing requirements of crew and targets.

Henrik Bengtsson, for valuable and incisive insights leading to the interface accepting broader usage patterns.

Luke Tierney, R Core, for pointing out the implementation of L’Ecuyer-CMRG streams in R, for ensuring statistical independence in parallel processing.

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