Caching

brainevent caches compiled shared libraries to avoid redundant recompilation. The cache key is a SHA-256 hash of:

• Source code

• Compiler flags (including optimization_level and use_fast_math)

• GPU architecture (or "cpu" for C++ builds)

• Compiler version

• brainevent version

Cache Directory

By default, cached artefacts are stored under ~/.cache/brainevent/. You can change this in three ways:

1. Python API (recommended):

   import brainevent
   
   brainevent.set_cache_dir("/tmp/my_brainevent_cache")
   print(brainevent.get_cache_dir())  # /tmp/my_brainevent_cache
   

2. Environment variable:

   export BRAINEVENT_CACHE_DIR=/tmp/my_brainevent_cache
   

3. Per-call override via build_directory:

   mod = brainevent.load_cuda_inline(
       ...,
       build_directory="/tmp/specific_build",
   )
   

Clearing the Cache

# Clear everything
brainevent.clear_cache()

# Clear only entries for a specific module
brainevent.clear_cache("my_kernels")

Force Rebuild

To skip the cache and recompile from scratch:

mod = brainevent.load_cuda_inline(
    ...,
    force_rebuild=True,
)

Idempotent Re-import

brainevent tracks which compiled .so files have already had their FFI targets registered in the current process. Calling load_cuda_file (or load_cuda_inline) a second time with the same source produces a cache hit — the .so is loaded but registration is skipped silently. This makes it safe to call the load function at module import time without worrying about RegistrationError when the same module is imported from multiple files.