Hello, we always use checkpoints and want to enable checkpointing in Python by default to avoid potentially error-prone extra steps for correct environment setup. It seems that the following approaches do not work (before creating a flow):

prefect.config.flows.checkpointing = True

or

os.environ["PREFECT__FLOWS__CHECKPOINTING"] = "True"

Instead, we need to ensure that no

prefect

import statement (direct or indirect) occurs before setting this environment variable. It seems impractical that prefect reads such configuration in top-level code (executed on import) and not in functions. Are there any better solutions?

Not 100% sure, but you may be able to put some kind of setting into your

~/.prefect/config.toml

file. Something like:

[flows]
checkpointing = true

Should be on whatever host/container the flows run in I think?

Hey @Andreas Eisenbarth, the config is indeed instantiated when you import Prefect and it is only instantiated once. There is some info here that explains that even if we had a

refresh

method, certain changes would not take affect like logging. At the same time, we need that configuration instantiated to run Prefect. The

toml

is the only other option like Kyle is suggesting.

on.environ

at the top of the script as you mentioned would work.

Thanks! So far our application could be run without

.prefect/config.toml

, but there will probably come more things for which we need that.