Installation

Requirements

You need Python 3.6 or later to run Ax.

The required Python dependencies are:

• botorch
• jinja2
• pandas
• scipy
• simplejson
• sklearn
• plotly >=2.2.1, <3.0

Installation via pip

We recommend installing Ax via pip. To do so, run:

pip3 install ax-platform

Recommendation for MacOS users: PyTorch is a required dependency of BoTorch, and can be automatically installed via pip. However, we recommend you install PyTorch manually before installing Ax, using the Anaconda package manager. Installing from Anaconda will link against MKL (a library that optimizes mathematical computation for Intel processors). This will result in up to an order-of-magnitude speed-up for Bayesian optimization, as at the moment, installing PyTorch from pip does not link against MKL.

Installing from source

To install from source:

1. Make sure you have installed the botorch dependency.
2. Download Ax from the Git repository.
3. cd into the ax project and run:

pip3 install -e .

Note: When installing from source, Ax requires a compiler for Cython code.

Optional Dependencies

Depending on your intended use of Ax, you may want to install Ax with optional dependencies.

If using Ax in Jupyter notebooks:

pip3 install git+ssh://gi[email protected]/facebook/Ax.git#egg=Ax[notebook]

If storing Ax experiments via SQLAlchemy in MySQL or SQLite:

pip3 install git+ssh://gi[email protected]/facebook/Ax.git#egg=Ax[mysql]

Note that instead of installation from Git, you can also clone a local version of the repo and then pip install with desired flags from the root of the local repo, e.g.:

pip3 install -e .[mysql]