Exclude specific tensors being updated by optimizer in TensorFlow - graph

Question

I have two graphs, which I suppose to train them independently, which means I have two different optimizers, but at the same time one of them is using the tensor values of the other graph. As a result, I need to be able to stop specific tensors being updated while training one of the graphs. I have assigned two different namescopes two my tensors and using this code to control updates over tensors for different optimizers:
mentor_training_vars = tf.get_collection(tf.GraphKeys.TRAINABLE_VARIABLES, "mentor")
train_op_mentor = mnist.training(loss_mentor, FLAGS.learning_rate, mentor_training_vars)
mentee_training_vars = tf.get_collection(tf.GraphKeys.TRAINABLE_VARIABLES, "mentee")
train_op_mentee = mnist.training(loss_mentee, FLAGS.learning_rate, mentee_training_vars)
the vars variable is being used like below, in the training method of mnist object:
def training(loss, learning_rate, var_list):
# Add a scalar summary for the snapshot loss.
tf.summary.scalar('loss', loss)
# Create the gradient descent optimizer with the given learning rate.
optimizer = tf.train.GradientDescentOptimizer(learning_rate)
# Create a variable to track the global step.
global_step = tf.Variable(0, name='global_step', trainable=False)
# Use the optimizer to apply the gradients that minimize the loss
# (and also increment the global step counter) as a single training step.
train_op = optimizer.minimize(loss, global_step=global_step, var_list=var_list)
return train_op
I'm using the var_list attribute of the optimizer class in order to control vars being updated by the optimizer.
Right now I'm confused whether I have done what I supposed to do appropriately, and even if there is anyway to check if any optimizer would only update partial of a graph?
I would appreciate if anyone can help me with this issue.
Thanks!

Answer 1

I have had a similar problem and used the same approach as you, i.e. via the var_list argument of the optimizer. I then checked whether the variables not intended for training stayed the same using:
the_var_np = sess.run(tf.get_default_graph().get_tensor_by_name('the_var:0'))
assert np.equal(the_var_np, pretrained_weights['the_var']).all()
pretrained_weights is a dictionary returned by np.load('some_file.npz') which I used to store the pre-trained weights to disk.
Just in case you need that as well, here is how you can override a tensor with a given value:
value = pretrained_weights['the_var']
variable = tf.get_default_graph().get_tensor_by_name('the_var:0')
sess.run(tf.assign(variable, value))