v0.1.20

Installation

Requirements

You need Python 3.7 or later to run Ax.

The required Python dependencies are:

  • botorch >=0.1.3
  • 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)
pip3 install ax-platform

Installation will use Python wheels from PyPI, available for OSX, Linux, and Windows.

Note: Make sure the pip3 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 pip3 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:

pip3 install jupyter

If you want to store the experiments in MySQL, you will need SQLAlchemy:

pip3 install SQLAlchemy

Latest Version

Installing from Git

You can install the latest (bleeding edge) version from GitHub:

pip3 install 'git+https://github.com/facebook/Ax.git#egg=Ax'

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:

pip3 install git+https://github.com/cornellius-gp/gpytorch.git
pip3 install git+https://github.com/pytorch/botorch.git

Optional Dependencies

To use Ax with a notebook environment, you will need Jupyter. Install it first:

pip3 install 'git+https://github.com/facebook/Ax.git#egg=Ax[notebook]'

If storing Ax experiments via SQLAlchemy in MySQL or SQLite:

pip3 install 'git+https://github.com/facebook/Ax.git#egg=Ax[mysql]'

Development

When contributing to Ax, we recommend cloning the repository and installing all optional dependencies:

# bleeding edge versions of GPyTorch + BoTorch are recommended
pip3 install git+https://github.com/cornellius-gp/gpytorch.git
pip3 install git+https://github.com/pytorch/botorch.git

git clone https://github.com/facebook/ax.git --depth 1
cd ax
pip3 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.

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