Getting started

Introduction

Hydra is an open-source Python framework that simplifies the development of research and other complex applications. The key feature is the ability to dynamically create a hierarchical configuration by composition and override it through config files and the command line. The name Hydra comes from its ability to run multiple similar jobs - much like a Hydra with multiple heads.

Key features:

• Hierarchical configuration composable from multiple sources
• Configuration can be specified or overridden from the command line
• Dynamic command line tab completion
• Run your application locally or launch it to run remotely
• Run multiple jobs with different arguments with a single command

Versions

Hydra supports Linux, Mac and Windows.
Use the version switcher in the top bar to switch between documentation versions.

	Version	Release notes	Python Versions
►	1.3 (Stable)	Release notes	3.6 - 3.11
	1.2	Release notes	3.6 - 3.10
	1.1	Release notes	3.6 - 3.9
	1.0	Release notes	3.6 - 3.8
	0.11	Release notes	2.7, 3.5 - 3.8

Quick start guide

This guide will show you some of the most important features you get by writing your application as a Hydra app. If you only want to use Hydra for config composition, check out Hydra's compose API for an alternative. Please also read the full tutorial to gain a deeper understanding.

Installation

pip install hydra-core --upgrade

Basic example

Config:

conf/config.yaml

db:
  driver: mysql
  user: omry
  pass: secret

Application:

my_app.py

import hydra
from omegaconf import DictConfig, OmegaConf

@hydra.main(version_base=None, config_path="conf", config_name="config")
def my_app(cfg : DictConfig) -> None:
    print(OmegaConf.to_yaml(cfg))

if __name__ == "__main__":
    my_app()

You can learn more about OmegaConf here later.

config.yaml is loaded automatically when you run your application

$ python my_app.py
db:
  driver: mysql
  pass: secret
  user: omry

You can override values in the loaded config from the command line:

$ python my_app.py db.user=root db.pass=1234
db:
  driver: mysql
  user: root
  pass: 1234

Composition example

You may want to alternate between two different databases. To support this create a config group named db, and place one config file for each alternative inside: The directory structure of our application now looks like:

├── conf
│   ├── config.yaml
│   ├── db
│   │   ├── mysql.yaml
│   │   └── postgresql.yaml
│   └── __init__.py
└── my_app.py

Here is the new config:

conf/config.yaml

defaults:
  - db: mysql

defaults is a special directive telling Hydra to use db/mysql.yaml when composing the configuration object. The resulting cfg object is a composition of configs from defaults with configs specified in your config.yaml.

You can now choose which database configuration to use and override values from the command line:

$ python my_app.py db=postgresql db.timeout=20
db:
  driver: postgresql
  pass: drowssap
  timeout: 20
  user: postgres_user

You can have as many config groups as you need.

Multirun

You can run your function multiple times with different configurations easily with the --multirun|-m flag.

$ python my_app.py --multirun db=mysql,postgresql
[HYDRA] Sweep output dir : multirun/2020-01-09/01-16-29
[HYDRA] Launching 2 jobs locally
[HYDRA]        #0 : db=mysql
db:
  driver: mysql
  pass: secret
  user: omry

[HYDRA]        #1 : db=postgresql
db:
  driver: postgresql
  pass: drowssap
  timeout: 10
  user: postgres_user

There is a whole lot more to Hydra. Read the tutorial to learn more.

Other stuff

Community

Ask questions on github or StackOverflow (Use the tag #fb-hydra):

• github
• StackOverflow

Follow Hydra on Twitter and Facebook:

• Facebook page
• Twitter

Citing Hydra

If you use Hydra in your research please use the following BibTeX entry:

@Misc{Yadan2019Hydra,
  author =       {Omry Yadan},
  title =        {Hydra - A framework for elegantly configuring complex applications},
  howpublished = {Github},
  year =         {2019},
  url =          {https://github.com/facebookresearch/hydra}
}