Python and JavaScript Variable Translation Errors in Colab

[Jonah1234567]

When trying to convert between python and JS in Google Colab, I ran into some unexpected errors. It seems that Bifrost would only allow for a one time conversion from a node to python variable. The same different code snippets would produce different results on consecutive runs.

I suspect the reason for this is that the import for bifrost isn't reset every time and the JS variable is then taken by bifrost so it cannot be used again. Ran on node 14.19.3, Python 3.7.13 and Bifrost 0.5.12.

In addition, Python variables changed in JS would not always "change" to the expected value when printed in Python afterwards, although I suspect these two errors are related and caused by the same underlying issue or at least similar issues.

[Jonah1234567]

const and let don't work with local python and no descriptor works but only because that actually defaults to var

[ccmcintyre-kingsds]

@Jonah1234567
Took a bit for this issue as described to really click for me, but I've run through your tests and a number of variations on them, while studying the py_storage.py sync code; I finally see what you're saying, and I've identified what's going on. It's more insidious and wider-spread than I anticipated (the behaviour you observed even occurs when using the %%node cell magic in notebooks+colabs, which is written to explicitly sync all variables in the top-level scopes; definitely problematic, if it's missing things like this). Thank you for raising attention to the problem; this one was otherwise far too easy to overlook.