Installation
Requirements
You need Python 3.10 or later to run Ax.
The required Python dependencies are:
- botorch
- jinja2
- pandas
- scipy
- sklearn
- plotly >=2.2.1
Stable Version
Installing via pip
We recommend installing Ax via pip (even if using Conda environment):
conda install pytorch torchvision -c pytorch # OSX only (details below)
pip install ax-platform
Installation will use Python wheels from PyPI, available for OSX, Linux, and Windows.
Note: Make sure the pip
being used to install ax-platform
is actually the one from the newly created Conda environment.
If you're using a Unix-based OS, you can use which pip
to check.
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, whereas installing PyTorch from pip does not link against MKL.
If you need CUDA on MacOS, you will need to build PyTorch from source. Please consult the PyTorch installation instructions above.
Optional Dependencies
To use Ax with a notebook environment, you will need Jupyter. Install it first:
pip install jupyter
If you want to store the experiments in MySQL, you will need SQLAlchemy:
pip install SQLAlchemy
Latest Version
Installing from Git
You can install the latest (bleeding edge) version from GitHub:
pip install 'git+https://github.com/facebook/Ax.git#egg=ax-platform'
See also the recommendation for installing PyTorch for MacOS users above.
At times, the bleeding edge for Ax can depend on bleeding edge versions of BoTorch (or GPyTorch). We therefore recommend installing those from Git as well:
pip install git+https://github.com/cornellius-gp/gpytorch.git
pip install git+https://github.com/pytorch/botorch.git
Optional Dependencies
To use Ax with a notebook environment, you will need Jupyter. Install it first:
pip install 'git+https://github.com/facebook/Ax.git#egg=ax-platform[notebook]'
If storing Ax experiments via SQLAlchemy in MySQL or SQLite:
pip install 'git+https://github.com/facebook/Ax.git#egg=ax-platform[mysql]'
Development
When contributing to Ax, we recommend cloning the repository and installing all optional dependencies:
# bleeding edge versions of GPyTorch + BoTorch are recommended
pip install git+https://github.com/cornellius-gp/gpytorch.git
pip install git+https://github.com/pytorch/botorch.git
git clone https://github.com/facebook/ax.git --depth 1
cd ax
pip install -e .[notebook,mysql,dev]
See recommendation for installing PyTorch for MacOS users above.
The above example limits the cloned directory size via the
--depth
argument to git clone
. If you require the entire commit history you may remove this
argument.