Partially Codable (Checkpointable)

Evolution Discussion
1

I'm trying to use Codable to checkpoint the variables mutated while training a machine learning model.
I'm running into a limitation that I would prefer a model to only define checkpointing partially and have a mutating func load(from: decoder: Decoder) throws function that loads from a checkpoint. This is because there is a part of the model that is const after construction and a part that is mutated during training.

Generally, what I'm interested in is a notion of PartiallyCodable which serializes out just a part of the data, and mutates in-place a pre-constructed prototype using data from a decoder.

This should be useful in any process where you have a relatively cheap initialization step, and an expensive but restricted update step.
eg:
Init: (Config) -> Model
Train: (Model) -> Model
Here, Init would be evaluated again in a program that is restoring from the checkpoint, and the effect of Train would be recovered from a file.

My question is, are there other circumstances that would benefit from this general notion of "PartiallyCodable"?

2

I think that we can and should think broader than machine learning use cases. In the general case, are you looking for the ability to serialize partial fields of a value, and deserialize into partial fields of a value? Specifically, will the following methods achieve what you need?

func partiallyEncode(to encoder: Encoder) throws
mutating func partiallyDecode(from decoder: Decoder) throws

Do others in the community have similar use cases?

How to check whether a key path is writable?
3

Sounds to me like something that can be solved with an implementation of Partial that supports Codable. If you have that, you can implement partiallyEncode in terms of transforming the type to a Partial (potentially selecting only a fraction of the properties), and partiallyDecode by decoding the Partial and then making a mutating func update(from partial: Partial<Self>)