Parameters updater

[alecandido]

This is aiming to supersede #1061, providing a method and an associated syntax to update Platform parameters.

[codecov]

Codecov Report

All modified and coverable lines are covered by tests ✅

Project coverage is 50.84%. Comparing base (f74c334) to head (f2850cd).
Report is 7 commits behind head on main.

Additional details and impacted files

@@            Coverage Diff             @@
##             main    #1086      +/-   ##
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+ Coverage   50.55%   50.84%   +0.28%     
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  Files          63       63              
  Lines        2886     2903      +17     
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+ Hits         1459     1476      +17     
  Misses       1427     1427              

Flag	Coverage Δ
unittests	50.84% <100.00%> (+0.28%)	⬆️

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[stavros11]

Also, since this is creating a new Parameters object (there's no other way, since that is frozen), the way to actually update the platform would be the following:

platform.parameters = platform.parameters.update(...)

right?

[alecandido]

Also, since this is creating a new Parameters object (there's no other way, since that is frozen), the way to actually update the platform would be the following:

platform.parameters = platform.parameters.update(...)

right?

Definitely.

In this sense, we can make a couple of improvements regarding the UI, renaming Parameters.update() to Parameters.replace() (standard Python nomenclature) and expose a Platform.update() method to apply this operation in-place.

[alecandido]

Ok, I have to admit that I've been a bit lazy with tests, since I'm only using dummy to test, and dummy has only int qubits' names.
However, that should be the most challenging path, so it should be good enough for the time being.

Any tests' extension is of course welcome (in case anyone feels we definitely need more). Even clear proposals are welcome (but the effort to directly implement them should be comparable in size... in any case, I'm happy to do that, if needed).

[stavros11]

Thanks @alecandido. I think we can merge this so that I restart working on qiboteam/qibocal#996 using it.

Ok, I have to admit that I've been a bit lazy with tests, since I'm only using dummy to test, and dummy has only int qubits' names. However, that should be the most challenging path, so it should be good enough for the time being.

I think testing on dummy is sufficient in this case, since this functionality is expected to behave the same on all platforms. True about string qubits, maybe an easy way to address this and other similar issues is to add a "dummy_strings" (and make our life more miserable), or just add some qubits with string names in the current dummy.

[alecandido]

I think testing on dummy is sufficient in this case, since this functionality is expected to behave the same on all platforms. True about string qubits, maybe an easy way to address this and other similar issues is to add a "dummy_strings" (and make our life more miserable), or just add some qubits with string names in the current dummy.

I could just add a minimal platform with string names in the tests. But since it's not that essential, I'll save it for later.