[ANNOUNCE] Apache MXNet (incubating) 1.4.0 Release

[Piyush Ghai]

Hello all,

The Apache MXNet (incubating) Community announces the availability of
Apache MXNet (incubating) 1.4.0!

Release blog post:
https://blogs.apache.org/mxnet/entry/apache-mxnet-1-4-is1 

https://medium.com/apache-mxnet/apache-mxnet-1-4-0-is-here-a8b6ac0ea3a1 



Apache MXNet (incubating) is a deep learning framework designed for
both efficiency and flexibility. It allows you to mix symbolic and
imperative programming to maximize efficiency and productivity.

This release improves usability, performance, and interoperability.

A full list of the changes in this release can be found in the release
notes:
https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/MXNET/Apache+MXNet+%28incubating%29+1.4.0+Release+Notes
 



A Link to the Download is here:
*http://mxnet.incubator.apache.org/install/download.html 

>*

If you prefer to build from source and experiment with various
compile-time configuration options, use this link to get the
instructions:
http://mxnet.incubator.apache.org/install/index.html 


Or You can download and play with MXNet easily using one of the options
below:
  1. The Pip packages can be found here: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/mxnet 

  2. The Docker Images can be found here:
https://hub.docker.com/r/mxnet/python/ 

Links in Maven to the published Scala packages:
https://repository.apache.org/content/repositories/releases/org/apache/mxnet/ 

https://repository.apache.org/#nexus-search;gav~org.apache.mxnet~~1.4.0~~ 



and to the experimental Clojure packages:
https://repository.apache.org/content/repositories/releases/org/apache/mxnet/contrib/clojure/
 


The release tag used for the 1.4.0 release is:
https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet/tree/1.4.0 


Some more MXNet Resources:
  1. Issues: https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet/issues 

  2. Wiki: https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/MXNET 



If you want to learn more about MXNet visit
http://mxnet.incubator.apache.org/ 

Finally, you are welcome to join and also invite your friends to the
dynamic and growing MXNet community by subscribing to
dev@mxnet.incubator.apache.org 


Acknowledgments:
We would like to thank everyone from the Apache MXNet community for their 
contributions to the 1.4.0 release.


Thanks!
Apache MXNet (incubating) Team
___

DISCLAIMER:
Apache MXNet (incubating) is an effort undergoing incubation at The
Apache Software Foundation (ASF), sponsored by the name of Apache
Incubator PMC. Incubation is required of all newly accepted
projects until a further review indicates that the
infrastructure, communications, and decision-making process have
stabilized in a manner consistent with other successful ASF
projects. While incubation status is not necessarily a reflection
of the completeness or stability of the code, it does indicate
that the project has yet to be fully endorsed by the ASF.

Re: [RESULTS][VOTE] Release Apache MXNet (incubating) version 1.4.0.rc3

[Piyush Ghai]

Hi all,

I’m happy to announce the results of the vote. 

This vote passes with 7 +1 votes (4 binding) and no 0 or -1 votes.

+1 votes
Carin / binding
Sheng / binding
Indhu / binding
Haibin / binding
Qing 
Roshani
Yuxi Hu

0 Votes 
No votes

-1 Votes
No votes


Vote thread can be found here [1]. 
I will continue with the release process on general@ and the release 
announcement will follow in the next few days.

Thanks,
Piyush 


[1] 
https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/618ad28580e838254f998deb71373467374a05228401dae0323a6d0f@%3Cdev.mxnet.apache.org%3E
 
<https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/618ad28580e838254f998deb71373467374a05228401dae0323a6d0f@%3Cdev.mxnet.apache.org%3E>
On 2019/02/19 17:53:08, Piyush Ghai  wrote: 
> Hi all,> 
> 
> There’s a small clarification. I was just made aware that only PMC members 
> have binding votes. > 
> So I’m nullifying this result as for now. > 
> 
> As per the PMC criteria, I still need at least 2 more votes from PMC members. 
> > 
> 
> I’ll update this thread when I have sufficient number of votes from PMC 
> members. > 
> 
> Thanks,> 
> Piyush> 
> 
> On 2019/02/19 17:40:43, Piyush Ghai  wrote: > 
> > Dear MXNet community,> > 
> > > 
> > I’m happy to announce the results of the vote. > > 
> > > 
> > This vote passes with 4 +1 votes (3 binding) and no 0 or -1 votes.> > 
> > > 
> > +1 votes> > 
> > Carin / binding> > 
> > Qing / binding> > 
> > Roshani / binding> > 
> > Yuxi Hu> > 
> > > 
> > 0 Votes > > 
> > No votes> > 
> > > 
> > -1 Votes> > 
> > No votes> > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > Vote thread can be found here [1]. > > 
> > I will continue with the release process on general@ and the release 
> > announcement will follow in the next few days.> > 
> > > 
> > Thanks,> > 
> > Piyush > > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > [1] 
> > https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/618ad28580e838254f998deb71373467374a05228401dae0323a6d0f@%3Cdev.mxnet.apache.org%3E
> >  
> > <https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/618ad28580e838254f998deb71373467374a05228401dae0323a6d0f@%3Cdev.mxnet.apache.org%3E>>
> >  > 

Re: [VOTE] Release Apache MXNet (incubating) version 1.4.0.rc3

[Piyush Ghai]

Hi all, 

I still need more votes from PMC members in order to conclude this vote. 

PMC members, please TEST and vote accordingly. Your votes will help us release 
MXNet version soon. 
I’m extending the voting thread until Feb 20th 12 AM PST. 

Best regards,
Piyush


On 2019/02/16 02:01:25, Piyush Ghai  wrote: 
> Dear MXNet community,> 
> 
> I would like to propose a vote to release Apache MXNet (incubating) version 
> v1.4.0.> 
> Voting will start today, Friday February 15th 6pm PST and will close on 
> Monday,> 
> February 18th 6pm PST.> 
> 
> Link to release notes:> 
> 
> https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/MXNET/Apache+MXNet+%28incubating%29+1.4.0+Release+Notes
>  
> <https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/MXNET/Apache+MXNet+(incubating)+1.4.0+Release+Notes>>
>  
> 
> Link to release candidate 1.4.0.rc3:> 
>  
> <https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet/releases/tag/1.4.0.rc3/>https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet/releases/tag/1.4.0.rc3
>  <https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet/releases/tag/1.4.0.rc3>/> 
> 
> Link to source and signatures on apache dist server:> 
> https://dist.apache.org/repos/dist/dev/incubator/mxnet/1.4.0.rc3/ 
> <https://dist.apache.org/repos/dist/dev/incubator/mxnet/1.4.0.rc3/> > 
> 
> 
> Please remember to TEST first before voting accordingly:> 
> +1 = approve> 
> +0 = no opinion> 
> -1 = disapprove (provide reason)> 
> 
> 
> Best regards,> 
> Piyush> 

Re: [RESULTS][VOTE] Release Apache MXNet (incubating) version 1.4.0.rc3

[Piyush Ghai]

Hi all,

There’s a small clarification. I was just made aware that only PMC members have 
binding votes. 
So I’m nullifying this result as for now. 

As per the PMC criteria, I still need at least 2 more votes from PMC members. 

I’ll update this thread when I have sufficient number of votes from PMC 
members. 

Thanks,
Piyush

On 2019/02/19 17:40:43, Piyush Ghai  wrote: 
> Dear MXNet community,> 
> 
> I’m happy to announce the results of the vote. > 
> 
> This vote passes with 4 +1 votes (3 binding) and no 0 or -1 votes.> 
> 
> +1 votes> 
> Carin / binding> 
> Qing / binding> 
> Roshani / binding> 
> Yuxi Hu> 
> 
> 0 Votes > 
> No votes> 
> 
> -1 Votes> 
> No votes> 
> 
> 
> Vote thread can be found here [1]. > 
> I will continue with the release process on general@ and the release 
> announcement will follow in the next few days.> 
> 
> Thanks,> 
> Piyush > 
> 
> 
> [1] 
> https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/618ad28580e838254f998deb71373467374a05228401dae0323a6d0f@%3Cdev.mxnet.apache.org%3E
>  
> <https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/618ad28580e838254f998deb71373467374a05228401dae0323a6d0f@%3Cdev.mxnet.apache.org%3E>>
>  

[RESULTS][VOTE] Release Apache MXNet (incubating) version 1.4.0.rc3

[Piyush Ghai]

Dear MXNet community,

I’m happy to announce the results of the vote. 

This vote passes with 4 +1 votes (3 binding) and no 0 or -1 votes.

+1 votes
Carin / binding
Qing / binding
Roshani / binding
Yuxi Hu

0 Votes 
No votes

-1 Votes
No votes


Vote thread can be found here [1]. 
I will continue with the release process on general@ and the release 
announcement will follow in the next few days.

Thanks,
Piyush 


[1] 
https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/618ad28580e838254f998deb71373467374a05228401dae0323a6d0f@%3Cdev.mxnet.apache.org%3E
 

[VOTE] Release Apache MXNet (incubating) version 1.4.0.rc3

[Piyush Ghai]

Dear MXNet community,

I would like to propose a vote to release Apache MXNet (incubating) version 
v1.4.0.
Voting will start today, Friday February 15th 6pm PST and will close on Monday,
February 18th 6pm PST.

Link to release notes:

https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/MXNET/Apache+MXNet+%28incubating%29+1.4.0+Release+Notes
 


Link to release candidate 1.4.0.rc3:
 
https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet/releases/tag/1.4.0.rc3
 /

Link to source and signatures on apache dist server:
https://dist.apache.org/repos/dist/dev/incubator/mxnet/1.4.0.rc3/ 
 


Please remember to TEST first before voting accordingly:
+1 = approve
+0 = no opinion
-1 = disapprove (provide reason)


Best regards,
Piyush

Re: MXNet - Label Bot functionality

[Piyush Ghai]

Hi Harsh,

Good job! This is super cool! Especially bringing down the response time to 
under 20 seconds. 

Thanks,
Piyush


> On Oct 15, 2018, at 3:49 PM, Qing Lan  wrote:
> 
> Hi Harsh,
> 
> This new label bot design looks great! I would like to encourage people to 
> review it and move forward to benefit the MXNet community.
> Since this new design needs webhook support from Apache, let's go through the 
> following steps to get this done:
> 
> 1. Demo and contributors review stage: all contributors are encouraged to 
> review the PR here:
> https://github.com/MXNetEdge/mxnet-infrastructure/pull/15 and leave your 
> thoughts so Harsh can apply them in his design.
> 2. Committers review stage: Once all contributors think the design is good to 
> go, let's get committers involved to get a review.
> 3. Committers send request to Apache Infra to get the webhook setup.
> 4. Harsh finally deploy the model and all of us can use it in incubator-mxnet 
> repo!
> 
> Some fun fact I would like to share:
> 1. This new bot can recommend labels and reply to people who file it!
> 2. It response time from 5mins -> less than 20 seconds
> 
> Thanks,
> Qing
> 
> On 10/15/18, 11:11 AM, "Harsh Patel"  wrote:
> 
>Hey,
>I have a demo available that users and developers can play around with --
>this is in regards to the post I had made regarding the updated label bot
>functionality. This is available on my fork (
>https://github.com/harshp8l/incubator-mxnet) if the developers would be
>able to provide feedback that would be great.
>The updated usage of this label bot:
>To add labels: @mxnet-label-bot, add ['label1', 'label2']
>To remove labels: @mxnet-label-bot, remove ['label1', 'label2']
>To update labels: @mxnet-label-bot, update ['label3', 'label4']
>(warning: with update - this will remove all other labels for a specific
>issue and update only with the labels the user specifies). Thanks.
> 
>My PR for reference:
>https://github.com/MXNetEdge/mxnet-infrastructure/pull/15
> 
>My Design:
>
> https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/MXNET/Machine+Learning+Based+GitHub+Bot
> 
>Best,
>-Harsh
> 
>On Mon, Oct 15, 2018 at 12:54 AM Hagay Lupesko  wrote:
> 
>> +1
>> Thanks for the contribution!
>> 
>> On Fri, Oct 12, 2018 at 1:41 AM kellen sunderland <
>> kellen.sunderl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> Awesome work!  Many thanks.
>>> 
>>> On Fri, Oct 12, 2018, 1:19 AM Harsh Patel 
>>> wrote:
>>> 
 Hey,
 I am looking to contribute to MXNet. I have a working implementation
>>> based
 on my proposed design structure according to this wiki page (
 
 
>>> 
>> https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/MXNET/Machine+Learning+Based+GitHub+Bot
 )
 - under 7.
 I have provided users with functionality allowing for adding, updating,
>>> and
 deleting labels for our issues. The response time with the bot to
>> provide
 the aforementioned functionality has been reduced as well. Users should
 expect speedy updates to labels based on requests made to the label
>> bot.
 The total number of GitHub API calls have been further reduced as well
 preventing potential bottlenecks that could result from GitHub.
 I would like to have a webhook for this repo:
 https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet so that this functionality
>>> will
 be used and tested by the developers here. Thanks.
 
 Best,
 -Harsh Patel
 
>>> 
>> 
> 
> 

Re: CUDNN algorithm selection failure

[Piyush Ghai]

Another build where test_slice_batchnorm_reshape_batchnorm fails : 
http://jenkins.mxnet-ci.amazon-ml.com/blue/organizations/jenkins/incubator-mxnet/detail/PR-12721/7/pipeline
 


—
Piyush 

> On Oct 3, 2018, at 9:32 AM, Pedro Larroy  wrote:
> 
> Seems is not the only test:
> http://jenkins.mxnet-ci.amazon-ml.com/blue/organizations/jenkins/incubator-mxnet/detail/PR-12726/5/pipeline
> 
> test_slice_batchnorm_reshape_batchnorm is also failing and hasn't been
> touched for a while. It doesn't look like a problem with the test to me,
> (not a flaky test). Looks to me that should find and address the root cause
> instead of disabling the test in this case.
> 
> Pedro.
> 
> On Tue, Oct 2, 2018 at 2:39 AM Marco de Abreu
>  wrote:
> 
>> I have created an issue at
>> https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet/issues/12715 and a PR to disable
>> the test at https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet/pull/12716.
>> 
>> This test is pretty new and was submitted with a number of other
>> problematic (and disabled) tests:
>> https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet/issues/11164 It could be
>> possible
>> that the test is simply not stable enough. The PR that introduced that test
>> is https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet/pull/10921 - it was merged
>> two
>> days ago.
>> 
>> Best regards,
>> Marco
>> 
>> On Tue, Oct 2, 2018 at 8:43 AM Pedro Larroy 
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> Thanks for checking Lin. If it happens again we will have to dig deeper.
>> We
>>> have just one executor in GPU so I wonder what could be the root cause of
>>> this.
>>> 
>>> On Mon, Oct 1, 2018 at 10:57 PM Lin Yuan  wrote:
>>> 
 I could not reproduce the error on an EC2 g3x8 instance making it hard
>> to
 debug. I also suspect it was due to resource usage limit on ci
>>> Instance.
 
 On Mon, Oct 1, 2018 at 10:40 PM Pedro Larroy <
>>> pedro.larroy.li...@gmail.com
> 
 wrote:
 
> It doesn't look like flakiness to me at first sight. I think it might
>>> be
> related to resource usage / allocation / leak in the worst case.
> 
> Could be that there was not enough memory GPU memory at the time of
>>> test
> execution. But I'm just speculating, hence my original question.
> 
> Pedro.
> 
> On Mon, Oct 1, 2018 at 8:16 PM Lin Yuan  wrote:
> 
>> Hi Pedro,
>> 
>> I also got this failure in my PR
>> 
>> 
> 
 
>>> 
>> http://jenkins.mxnet-ci.amazon-ml.com/blue/organizations/jenkins/incubator-mxnet/detail/PR-11742/27/pipeline
>> 
>> I was not able to identify the root cause of it from changelist.
>> Are
 you
>> suggesting there is some flakiness in the master branch too?
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> 
>> Lin
>> 
>> On Mon, Oct 1, 2018 at 4:55 PM Pedro Larroy <
> pedro.larroy.li...@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> Hi
>>> 
>>> I saw this failure on CI:
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
> 
 
>>> 
>> http://jenkins.mxnet-ci.amazon-ml.com/blue/organizations/jenkins/incubator-mxnet/detail/master/1697/pipeline
>>> 
>>> Have you seen other cases where we fail to select the best CUDNN
>> algorithm?
>>> In which circumstances this could happen, and do you think is a
>>> good
> idea
>>> to have one selected by default as a last resort?
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Pedro.
>>> 
>> 
> 
 
>>> 
>> 

MXNet Model Backwards Compatibility

[Piyush Ghai]

Hello, everyone,

I have been working on introducing tests to check model compatibility and
sanity across different MXNet versions. The goal of the project was to
ensure that models trained on earlier versions of MXNet are backward
compatible with the latest release candidate version: they can be loaded by
latest RC and also are consistent with regards to the inference outputs.

I have designed and implemented first version of Model Backwards
Compatibility Checker and you can find more details about it in this cWiki
document

.

I would like to invite more ideas/suggestions from the community on how can
we further improve and extend this project.

Best,
Piyush

Re: [DISCUSS] Subscribe dev@ to Github Activities?

[Piyush Ghai]

+1 
> On Jul 12, 2018, at 11:50 AM, Tianqi Chen  wrote:
> 
> +1
> 
> On Thu, Jul 12, 2018 at 11:10 AM, Sheng Zha  wrote:
> 
>> Hi all,
>> 
>> Should we subscribe dev list to github updates on mxnet repo? Both github
>> issues/PRs and the dev list are intended for technical discussions and in
>> that aspect largely share the same goal. Since MXNet has most activity
>> github, this could help dev@ to become more active. Some pros and cons:
>> 
>> Pros:
>> - There have been many high quality discussions that happen on github to
>> which the dev list can benefit.
>> - Replies on update emails are reflected on the specific issue/PR.
>> - Users can also choose to click on the link and go to github to
>> participate in discussion.
>> - We still have the ability to carry out dev@ only conversation.
>> 
>> Cons:
>> - Higher volume on dev list.
>> - Some discussions might not be suitable for dev@. (though I can't think
>> of
>> why such conversation should happen on github either)
>> 
>> -sz
>>