Lazy loading

Usually, all model assets are loaded as soon as the ModelLibrary is instantiated. Sometimes this is not desirable, notably when using PySpark.

Thus, when lazy_loading=True the ModelLibrary tries to delay the loading and deserialization of the assets as much as possible. You can also set this behavior by setting MODELKIT_LAZY_LOADING=True in your environment.

Specifically:

• When the ModelLibrary is instantiated nothing really happens: the Model object is instantiated without deserializing the asset.
• When ModelLibrary.get is called the first time, the Model's asset is downloaded (via ModelLibrary._load) to a local directory and deserialized.

It is also possible to explicitly ask the ModelLibrary to load all required_models at once by calling ModelLibrary.preload.