Configs can be pickled

[wesselvannierop]

See test test_config_pickle, which dumps and loads a Config with pickle. Useful for our caching mechanism which uses pickle.

Summary by CodeRabbit

• Bug Fixes

  • Enhanced Config object stability with defensive checks that guard against missing internal state attributes, preventing crashes when accessing configuration properties in certain edge cases.

• Tests

  • Added test coverage to validate that Config instances can be properly serialized and deserialized while maintaining complete data integrity and object equivalence.

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[coderabbitai]

Walkthrough

This PR adds pickle serialization testing for Config instances and introduces defensive attribute existence checks to prevent AttributeError when accessing the internal __accessed__ tracking mechanism.

Changes

Cohort / File(s)	Change Summary
Config Pickle Serialization tests/test_configs.py	New test test_config_pickle validates that Config instances can be pickled and unpickled without data loss, using pickle.dumps/pickle.loads and equality assertion.
Config Attribute Guards zea/config.py	Added hasattr(self, "_Config__accessed") checks in _mark_accessed and _mark_unaccessed to prevent AttributeError when the internal tracking attribute is uninitialized.

Estimated code review effort

🎯 2 (Simple) | ⏱️ ~10 minutes

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 3

✅ Passed checks (3 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Description Check	✅ Passed	Check skipped - CodeRabbit’s high-level summary is enabled.
Title check	✅ Passed	The title 'Configs can be pickled' directly and clearly summarizes the main objective of the PR: adding pickling support for Config objects.
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	Docstring coverage is 100.00% which is sufficient. The required threshold is 80.00%.

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✨ Finishing touches

• 📝 Generate docstrings

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🧹 Recent nitpick comments

tests/test_configs.py (1)

254-267: Consider extending test coverage for pickle round-trip.

The test verifies value equality but doesn't confirm that:

1. Nested objects are restored as Config instances (not plain dicts)
2. Internal state like __frozen__ is preserved after unpickling

This could mask issues where pickling silently degrades Config functionality.

💡 Suggested additional assertions

     # Check if the config is the same
     config_check_equal_recursive(config, unpickled)
+
+    # Verify nested structures are still Config instances
+    assert isinstance(unpickled, Config)
+    assert isinstance(unpickled.nested_dictionary, Config)
+    assert isinstance(unpickled.nested_dictionary.doubly_nested_dictionary, Config)

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📜 Recent review details

Configuration used: Repository UI

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 8613512 and 136987a.

📒 Files selected for processing (2)

• tests/test_configs.py
• zea/config.py

🧰 Additional context used

🧬 Code graph analysis (1)

tests/test_configs.py (1)

zea/config.py (1)

• Config (62-494)

⏰ Context from checks skipped due to timeout of 90000ms. You can increase the timeout in your CodeRabbit configuration to a maximum of 15 minutes (900000ms). (1)

• GitHub Check: image

🔇 Additional comments (1)

zea/config.py (1)

281-289: Guards correctly prevent AttributeError during unpickling.

The hasattr(self, "_Config__accessed") checks are necessary because during dict unpickling, __setitem__ or __setattr__ may be called before instance attributes are restored. These guards prevent AttributeError in that window.

Note: The existing pickle test (test_configs.py:254) only verifies dict content preservation, not the metadata state (__accessed__, __parent__). However, since these are instance attributes set via super().__setattr__(), they are preserved by Python's default dict pickling. No explicit __getstate__/__setstate__ is required for basic functionality.

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[codecov]

Codecov Report

❌ Patch coverage is 0% with 2 lines in your changes missing coverage. Please review.

Files with missing lines	Patch %	Lines
zea/config.py	0.00%	2 Missing ⚠️

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