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GSwarm: Simple, Reliable Process Supervision for RL-Swarm

A look at GSwarm, a Go-based process supervisor for RL-Swarm nodes—built for reliability, simplicity, and developer sanity.

Reinforcement LearningDistributed ComputingProcess ManagementOpen Source

GSwarm is a lightweight process supervisor written in Go. Its only job: keep your RL-Swarm node process running, logged, and easy to restart—no matter what OS or edge-case you throw at it.

What Problem Does GSwarm Solve?

If you’ve ever tried to run RL-Swarm for any length of time, you know the pain:

  • Processes randomly crash (OOM, device loss, segfaults, stray exceptions)
  • Dependencies are missing or change out from under you
  • Logs are a mess—stdout/stderr redirected, hard to find, easy to lose
  • You forget to restart things, or your bash script doesn’t catch the real error

GSwarm does one thing well: it supervises your RL-Swarm process. If it dies, GSwarm restarts it. If dependencies are missing, it installs them. And it captures logs, so you can debug failures after the fact.

What GSwarm Actually Does

  • Runs and Restarts RL-Swarm Processes
    GSwarm executes your RL-Swarm command and keeps it alive. If the process exits, GSwarm restarts it, using exponential backoff to avoid thrashing if the problem persists.
  • Handles Python, Node, and Yarn Dependency Installation
    GSwarm will automatically install dependencies (using pip, npm, or yarn as appropriate) before launching the process. This keeps environments consistent across runs and platforms.
  • Structured Logging
    All process output (stdout and stderr) is logged with timestamps and process IDs. Makes post-mortem debugging and monitoring much easier.

What GSwarm Does Not Do

  • GSwarm does not orchestrate RL-Swarm peers, handle networking, interact with blockchains, or manage distributed jobs.
  • It does not coordinate checkpoints, manage multi-GPU topology, or run anything beyond the single process you ask it to.
  • It’s not a Docker orchestrator, and it doesn’t replace monitoring or deployment stacks.

GSwarm is just a supervisor: simple, reliable, and battle-tested for keeping one RL process running in a hostile world.

Roadmap: What’s Next

Planned features and improvements (see the repo issues):

  • More robust logging (with easier log rotation and export)
  • Better error reporting when dependencies or commands fail
  • Improved CLI for both headless (prod) and interactive (dev) use
  • Simpler Windows setup and more thorough cross-platform testing
  • (Optional) Metrics hooks for monitoring integration

Container deployment, distributed awareness, and advanced orchestration are explicitly out of scope.

Getting Started

Install and run GSwarm alongside your RL-Swarm job:

go install github.com/Deep-Commit/gswarm@latest

gswarm

That’s it: GSwarm will pip install dependencies (if needed), start your RL job, log output, and keep it running, automatically restarting on failure.

Why Use GSwarm?

  • Less downtime—automatic restarts mean more completed jobs
  • No manual intervention for routine crashes or dependency errors
  • Better logs for troubleshooting and post-mortems
  • Cross-platform reliability, no matter your deployment environment

If you just want your RL-Swarm job to keep running without hassle, GSwarm does exactly that. Nothing more, nothing less.

Learn More

If you have ideas or hit issues, open an issue or contribute—feedback is welcome.

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