Fifth of five; stacked on #38049. The split gave every namespace a file, but
only for the half an operator types. This is the other half.
## The parallel quotients are declared, not written out
`attn_tp_size` and its five siblings were sixty lines of near-identical
properties in the runtime context, a file away from the leaves they are
quotients of, so reading `parallel.py` told you what you could set and nothing
about what that decides.
They are declared in `Parallel` now, in the same class as those leaves. They
carry no annotation, so they are not dataclass fields and
`collect_input_fields` never puts them on the record -- the same mechanism that
already keeps `_NS_PATH` off it. That is the right exclusion: a quotient has no
operator input to preserve, and the record is what crosses a process boundary,
where a stamped width is one an elastic scale-up will not refresh.
## A quotient is a value in the bag, like every other derived one
`_derived_width` answered from a stamp or, failing that, a live process group.
The group read could never disagree with the stamp:
- `initialize_model_parallel` stamps all six as its last statement,
unconditionally;
- an elastic scale-up restamps `attn_dp_size` through
`update_dp_attention_post_scale` -- the comment claiming it does *not* was
wrong;
- no hardware backend builds groups of its own;
- `multimodal_gen`, which has its own `initialize_model_parallel` and does not
stamp, never reads a quotient.
So a built group was always already stamped, and the group read goes -- and with
it the last reason for a quotient to be resolved on every read.
Every input to `derive_parallel_widths` is a record field. `dcp_enabled` is
`decode_context_parallel_size > 1`, not a fact about a built group; it was
spelled `_DCP is not None`, which is a longer way to say the same thing. So the
six are fixed once the configuration is fixed -- the same test every other
`Derived(fn=...)` in this PR passes. They are declared the same way and computed
the same way: once, at publish, into ordinary bag leaves.
What remains is override -> stamp -> published leaf. The stamp stays above the
leaf because an elastic scale-up restamps `attn_dp_size`; the override stays on
top because that is how a test names a width.
## One answer for the config-derived predicates
`enable_mamba_extra_buffer` and its lazy variant, `is_ep_joiner`,
`is_ep_scale_joiner`, `is_startup_weight_load_overlap`: each existed as a
`ServerArgs` member for the resolution pipeline and, for most of them, again as
a `runtime_context` function for readers after publish. Three places to keep
saying the same thing.
A `Derived(fn=...)` is a pure function of the published configuration, so
`publish` computes it once and stores it as an ordinary bag leaf -- a plain
attribute load, which is what a read inside compiled model code needs. The
function is handed the whole resolved config rather than the bag it lands in,
because a derivation is free to span namespaces and the mamba one does: it
reads `memory.disable_radix_cache` alongside its own `exec.mamba` strategy,
which is why it could never have been a method on either bag.
The pre-publish helpers stay -- resolution needs the predicate before there is
a bag to read -- and three readers keep them, because they run before their own
process publishes: `initialize_dp_attention`, which the weight-cache daemon
calls while building its groups thirty lines before its `publish`, and
`PortArgs.init_new`, a factory handed the record that already reads eighteen
other fields off it.
## Notes for a reviewer
**Overriding a leaf does not move its quotient.** `override(tp_size=2)` leaves
`attn_tp_size` where the published config put it, because nothing is recomputed
on read. A test states a topology by publishing a config -- which is what a
real process does -- or by naming the width it wants, `override(attn_tp_size=2)`.
Six tests say it that way now. This is the price of having one answer computed
once, and it is the same price every other derived value in the config already
carries.
A caller that reads a quotient without publishing or overriding now gets an
explicit error naming the field, instead of a default that an uninitialised
group happened to supply. One fixture was in that state --
`TestMlaWriteDoorsUnderDcp` built a bare pool and asked whether DCP was on --
and it publishes a config now, which is what the process it stands in for
does.
Eighteen sites read these predicates without calling them. That is correct --
they are properties -- but it is worth saying they were checked, because a
census that assumes otherwise reports eighteen always-true conditions.
## The skill that documents this subsystem is updated with it
`.claude/rules/modify-component-must-read.md` points at
`.claude/skills/sglang-runtime-context/SKILL.md` before anyone touches these
files, so a stale sentence there is a wrong instruction rather than a stale
note. Four of its load-bearing statements stopped being true across this series
and are corrected here: `NS(...)` is no longer how a field states its namespace
(the declaring class is); the DCP degrade rule is gone, because the quotients
are not live reads; `mamba_extra_buffer_enabled()` and the other predicate
functions it named as the shape to copy no longer exist; and the
namespace-coverage ratchet is described in terms of the marker. The docstring of
`test_server_args_namespaces.py` said the same thing and is fixed too.
The consequence a test author actually trips over is stated there as well:
overriding a leaf no longer moves its quotient, so a topology is stated by
publishing a config or by naming the width.
## Verification
A full registered-unit sweep (648 files) against this stack's merge-base:
19 failures on both sides, the same 19 -- AMD `gfx950`, `modelopt`,
`cuda_vmm`, `weight_checker` and friends, none of them config. The narrower 139-file config sweep used earlier in this series
does not contain the files this change reaches -- `test_kv_index_translator`
never names `get_parallel()`, it constructs an object that does -- which is why
the baseline differential over everything is what is quoted here.
`test_bag_values_match_server_args` asserted `bag == field`. That holds today
only because construction resolves in place; step 12 keeps the record raw, and
the plan doc calls this test out as one that becomes **false by design** for
every field resolution fills in.
Rewritten against the resolved projection, which is the half that survives: the
bag carries what resolution produced. The `bag == field` assertion stays as one
line at the end, labelled as the tripwire -- when it starts failing for a
resolution-written leaf, the flip has landed and the bag is the only place the
effective value lives.
The reference is an independent resolution of the same raw input (a fresh,
never-published record) rather than `resolved_server_args_dict()`, which reads
`vars(server_args)` back and therefore only restates the published instance.
And the record goes through the real pipeline on a real mini config, published
through `publish()`: the dummy-model path returns at the dummy boundary with
every sampled leaf still raw, so the old comparison was raw==raw and vacuous
(both Codex catches). Reproducibility (#34094) licenses the sibling as a
stand-in for the pipeline output.
The sample admits only leaves resolution writes on this input on both CI
device shapes (attention_backend, page_size, chunked_prefill_size,
mem_fraction_static), and the raw-differs guard asserts it per leaf -- a
default-count threshold let supplied inputs like `model_path` (no dataclass
default, so any path "differs") stand in for resolution work. Passthrough
leaves (host, hicache_ratio, moe_runner_backend, model_path) move to a
separate projection smoke that claims only what it checks: publish projected
an unchanged field into its namespace. Between the two resolutions the test
restores environ and the EnvField none-flags, so the sibling resolves the
same pristine input rather than the first resolution's leftovers.
And the class runs its body exactly once, like the other dual-resolve
harnesses: a CI retry re-enters after the first attempt leaked process
state, which is the hazard the pristine snapshot exists to rule out.
docs(skill): a supplied-instance read is not automatically safe
The whole-object rule said "keep the supplied-instance contract; don't rewrite
the parameter reads unless the field is runtime-mutated". That is the right rule
for the *object* and the wrong stopping point for the *field*: after step 12 the
record carries the user's raw input, so `server_args.page_size` inside a
runner-owned constructor reads the CLI default rather than the effective value.
The rule now names that second case as step-12 debt with a guard attached
(`test_supplied_instance_exposure_ratchet.py` fails on a new pair, so the
decision is made when the read is written), and names the two shapes that stay
parameter-form on purpose: a helper the resolution pipeline calls with a
`resolved_view`, and a factory whose contract is "build X from the record you
are handed".
`ServerArgs.override(source, **fields)` was the last way to change a resolved
`ServerArgs` in place. Every remaining call-site was one of two things, and
neither wanted an in-place write:
- **A config for someone else.** A draft worker's context length, an encode
worker's device, the compile script's watchdog, the client's port pick, a test
fixture's backends. These already deepcopied first — the write was on the copy.
- **A launcher-stage resolution.** `resolve_auto_parsers` detected the chat
template's parsers and wrote them back, to be inherited by the schedulers it
spawns.
Both are "one config becomes another", so `derive(source, **fields)` returns the
variant and leaves the receiver — and any bags projected from it — untouched. It
deliberately is not `dataclasses.replace`: resolution does not re-run, because
the values being set are decided after it, from inputs it never had. Provenance
and the resolvable-field stash work as before, on the copy.
`resolve_auto_parsers` now computes the parsers and returns the config to launch
with; the detection helpers stop taking a config to mutate. `HiMambaRadixCache`
re-applied a HiCache layout normalization `__post_init__` already performs (the
same duplicate removed from `UnifiedRadixCache` in ebb1c88d23) and just goes.
With no in-place mutation left, `ServerArgs.__setattr__` raising after
resolution *is* the guarantee, so the textual writer ratchet retires and
`test_server_args_derive.py` pins the contract instead: the receiver survives
deriving, the published instance still refuses assignment, and deriving does not
publish. `SGLANG_STRICT_CONFIG_MUTATION` was already unused — the guard has been
unconditional since the mutation sweep — and goes with it.
The detection tests drop their `SimpleNamespace` stand-in for a real
`ServerArgs`; the test kit and the MLA chunk-metadata fixture publish a derived
variant instead of writing the runner's published config.
`get_server_args().<field>` reads one process's startup record. Nine sites still
did that for a value that has a namespace: the attention backend (5),
`skip_tokenizer_init` (2), the draft-aware `load_format`, and a chunked-prefill
size in `sglang.kernels`. They now read `get_exec().kernel` / `get_serving()` /
`get_model()` / `get_schedule()`, so they see the resolved value including
post-publish overrides.
The multimodal processor's device selection moves to the instance it was
constructed with rather than to a namespace: `base_gpu_id` differs per worker (the
encode-server DP workers each specialise their own copy), so no process-global
value can stand in for it, and engines sharing a tokenizer process each need their
own. Branch order, the NPU preprocess patches, and the case that leaves "device"
unset are unchanged.
What stays on `get_server_args()` is the derived API — `@property` and method
members computed from several fields plus the HF config
(`mamba_cache_chunk_size`, `get_model_config()`, `enable_mamba_extra_buffer*`) —
plus three config-intent reads of live-shadowed sizes, each of which needs an
answer the live topology property cannot give (the DSA indexer's PP gate must
short-circuit before touching the PP group, `allocation`'s DCP gate asks whether
DCP was configured at all, and the CUDA-IPC recycler runs where no group exists).
A new AST ratchet pins both shapes it can see — the direct call and an alias
bound from it in the same function — at 0 and 12 respectively, exempting the
derived APIs and those three sites by name. The alias-form baseline is not zero:
those reads are mostly per-runner fields in model code, and lowering them is the
next slice.
Two fixtures stopped faking config: `test_dllm_fdfo_kv_reuse` rebound
`allocation.get_server_args` to a SimpleNamespace, which silently stops
intercepting the moment a reader migrates; it publishes a real config instead.
EAGLEWorkerV2, StandaloneWorkerV2, MultiLayerEagleWorkerV2 and
FrozenKVMTPWorkerV2 wrote the draft's context_length onto the ServerArgs
instance they share with the target worker, and the scheduler wrote the draft's
load_format onto that same object just before creating them. The target's config
carried draft values from then on, and anything constructed later in the process
inherited them.
Scheduler.maybe_init_draft_worker now makes one draft copy through
draft_server_args_copy() and hands it to both the worker factory and the worker,
so every algorithm gets it — the four built-ins, dflash/dspark (which deepcopy
it again inside build_draft_tp_worker), and anything registered through
SpeculativeAlgorithm.register. The copy starts from the config the process
resolved, not from the pristine seed, so load-time overrides made before this
point (the chunked-prefix gate, the SM100 GDN prefill default) are part of what
the draft sees; context_length and load_format are applied on top.
The construction runs under a preserved publish of that copy, the shape
build_draft_tp_worker already used. Weight loading reads the bags rather than the
instance it was handed — Inkling's ModelOpt scale normalization keys on
load_format — so the draft has to be built with its own config published, and
the target's is back in the slot when construction returns.
The EAGLE hot-token-map write is deleted, not moved. init_token_map runs from
alloc_memory_pool, long after the draft's TpModelWorker built its ModelConfig,
and hot_vocab_size is only ever read off model_config.hf_config, which
json_model_override_args reaches at ModelConfig construction. The write could not
affect the draft model; only the shared instance saw it. hot_token_id is
unchanged, so a draft checkpoint that declares hot_vocab_size behaves as before.
Tests: draft_server_args_copy carries the target context_length, a configured
draft load_format and any load-time override while leaving the target's instance
alone; and the scheduler handoff pins that the factory and the worker both
receive the copy, that the copy is the published config during construction, and
that the target's is restored afterwards.
Writer ratchet 31 -> 26.
The skill still described the retired resolve-at-end contract (a single
resolved ServerArgs as the source of truth, ServerArgs.override as the
mutation entry). Rewrite the config sections for the landed model:
- ServerArgs is a pristine published seed; resolved config lives in the
namespace bags (get_exec()/get_memory()/.../get_device()), projected at
publish(server_args, role=...) per process entry.
- Post-publish mutation goes through get_context().override (bag-only);
ServerArgs.override is being retired behind the writer ratchet, and
rerouting a writer co-flips all its readers in the same commit.
- Documented the reads that stay on an instance (per-runner fork fields,
per-instance tokenizer/entrypoints boundaries, whole-object passes),
get_parallel()'s config/live dual semantics with the live-shadowed
sizes rule, preserve_config for nested publishes, and the bag-only
declare_load_time_override route.
- Testing idioms: publish-seeding (override_server_args + scoped bag
overrides) instead of faking accessors or SimpleNamespace stand-ins;
per-file test runs to avoid leaked-publish masking.
- Guardrails: added the writer ratchet, namespace-coverage lint, and the
migration-deferral ratchet.
Liangsheng Yin