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.
Last of four; stacked on #38048.
The record is the operator's input; the bags are what is in effect. A reader
that takes the record and reads a field off it gets the input, which is the
wrong one of the two whenever resolution decided something -- and the mistake is
silent, because for most fields and most launches the two agree. Several of
these files already read both ways, sometimes in the same expression:
```python
get_tokenizer(
get_serving().tokenizer_path,
tokenizer_mode=server_args.tokenizer_mode, # the input, not the decision
...
)
```
Sixty-odd files convert. Record field reads in runtime code go from 199 to 11.
Nine parameters that the conversion emptied are dropped along with the argument
at every call site -- the dead-parameter ratchet is what names them.
### "Runs after its process publishes" is a per-entry-point claim
Most converted reads sit in the serving and model-executor layers, which only
exist after publication, or in the two subprocess entry points, which publish
first thing. Three places are not like that, and they keep reading the record
they were handed:
- **`HttpServerEngineAdapter`** launches the server as a *child*. The parent
resolves the record and never publishes, so the adapter's own reads -- the
launch banner, the API key in its readiness loop, the TP width in
`update_weights_from_tensor` -- are of `self.server_args`. A bag read here
fails closed in a bare process, or answers for an unrelated engine in one that
happens to have published.
- **`serve_grpc`** reads its sidecar port before the integrated servicer builds
the `Engine` that publishes. The comment above that line already said so and
already bound `cfg = resolving_view(server_args)` for it; the sidecar port and
the port it derives from read `cfg`.
- **`initialize_dp_attention`** runs from callers whose publish is not
guaranteed, so its one predicate stays on the resolution view.
`ROLE_NAMESPACE_SETS["dp_controller"]` gains `observability` and `serving`,
because the controller's metrics gate, tracing setup and worker-port broadcast
now read those namespaces. Under `SGLANG_ROLE_NAMESPACES=enforce` that set is
what the process may read, so a conversion that reaches a new namespace has to
widen it in the same change.
## Three things worth a reviewer's attention
**Eleven reads were `getattr(record, "field", default)`.** An AST scan for
attribute access does not see those, so the census that said "43 readers" was
counting the shape it could match rather than the thing it was after.
`incremental_streaming_output` was read that way twice, and the transcription
tests were the only reason it surfaced.
**Not every record read is a bag read waiting to happen.** A multimodal
processor's `base_gpu_id` is the instance's, not the process's: two engines in
one process keep different ones, and
`test_publishing_another_config_does_not_move_the_device` exists to say so. It
stays on the record while `rl_on_policy_target` beside it moves.
`RequestMetricsExporter` is the same shape -- it is handed the directory it
writes to, and a test builds several with different ones. `configure_logger` is
a third: 17 call sites, one of which passes an `argparse.Namespace`, so it is
not a global-context reader at all. Those eleven remaining reads are the ones
with a reason.
**The fixtures move with the code.** Tests that hung config off a mock manager
now publish a record, which is what the serving layer reads; where a test states
a value it says so with `override_server_args` instead of assigning through the
mock. `test_hisparse_unit` is the last of them: it stubbed a `server_args` onto
a fake scheduler to say the decode radix cache was off, and the value it was
standing in for is the published default, so the stub goes and the class
publishes.
## Two things CI caught that a local sweep could not
**`unittest.TestCase.enterContext` is Python 3.11+.** The converted fixtures used
it at 18 sites; `requires-python` is `>=3.10` and CI runs 3.10, so every one of
them raised `AttributeError` there while passing on a newer local interpreter.
They call `enter_override(self, ...)` now -- a four-line helper in
`sglang/test/test_utils.py` over the override's own `install()` / `restore()`.
**A batched sweep cannot see a missing publish.** Three fixtures needed a
published config and did not have one; each *passed* inside a shard where some
other file had published, and failed when run alone. The affected cases are
`test_serving_completions` (which set `incremental_streaming_output` on the mock
manager's record, where nothing reads it now), `test_qwen3_vl_feature_materialization`
(same shape for `mm_enable_dp_encoder`), and the two Qwen Rust tests -- whose
fixture already carried the comment `# Non-auto: get_resolved_model_impl would
choke on a SimpleNamespace` next to the `model_impl` it sets, which is exactly
what happened once `get_mm_processor_cls` started reading that value from the
bag. Its `publish` mirrors `model_impl` now, like the four fields it already
mirrored.
## Verification
A full registered-unit sweep (648 files) against this stack's merge-base:
19 failures on both sides, the same 19, none of them config. That sweep is what
caught 23 failures the file-scoped runs missed -- and, later, that the narrower
139-file list did not even contain the files this change reaches. It is also
what caught the `test_hisparse_unit` fixture above: the file passes inside a
shard where something else published, and fails when it is run on its own,
which is why every failing file is re-run alone before it is counted.
Cheng Wan