guidance on launching xmanager from colab

[proppy]

The current codelab gives a good overview of orchestrating xmanager using its Python API directly from jupyter cells:
https://github.com/deepmind/xmanager/blob/main/codelab.ipynb

I'm curious if you have any guidance on how to achieve similar result in https://colab.research.google.com/ given it's limited support for async, await googlecolab/colabtools#1553.

[andrewluchen]

It isn't required to use async, at least in pure Python. Does it work if you remove it?

[proppy]

also filed #21 about installation issue in the current colab environment (18.06)

[proppy]

@andrewluchen if I remove it I get the following error:

with xm_local.create_experiment(experiment_title='my-first-experiment') as experiment:
    print(f'Local Experiment created with experiment_id={experiment.experiment_id}')

RuntimeError                              Traceback (most recent call last)
[<ipython-input-4-d5d140cdb440>](https://localhost:8080/#) in <module>()
      2 from xmanager import xm_local
      3 
----> 4 with xm_local.create_experiment(experiment_title='my-first-experiment') as experiment:
      5     print(f'Local Experiment created with experiment_id={experiment.experiment_id}')

[/usr/local/lib/python3.7/dist-packages/xmanager/xm/core.py](https://localhost:8080/#) in __enter__(self)
    528   def __enter__(self):
    529     if asyncio.get_event_loop().is_running():
--> 530       raise RuntimeError('When using Experiment from a coroutine please use '
    531                          '`async with` syntax')
    532 

RuntimeError: When using Experiment from a coroutine please use `async with` syntax

See the following colab:
https://colab.research.google.com/gist/proppy/9f4c8b65c4eda51c08a763a751a50db9/xmanager-playground.ipynb

[thesstefan]

A Colab notebook exemplifying how an experiment can be launched is available here. Due to Colab's limited async and await support, this is currently done by running all launch instructions in one cell. Further improvements to the notebook may be made in the future.