iwopy 0.0.15

Fraunhofer IWES optimization tools in Python

iwopy

Fraunhofer IWES optimization tools in Python

Overview

The iwopy package is in fact a meta package that provides interfaces to other open-source Python optimization packages out there. Currently this includes

• pymoo
• pygmo

iwopy can thus be understood as an attempt to provide the best of all worlds when it comes to solving optimization problems with Python. Obviously all the credit for implementing the invoked optimizers goes to the original package providers.

The basic idea of iwopy is to provide abstract base classes, that can be concretized for any kind of problem by the users, and the corresponding solver interfaces. However, also some helpful problem wrappers and an original optimizer are provided:

• Problem wrapper LocalFD: Calculates derivatives by finite differences
• Problem wrapper RegularDiscretizationGrid: Puts the problem on a Grid
• Optimizer GG: Greedy Gradient optimization with constraints

All calculations support vectorized evaluation of a complete population of parameters. This is useful for heuristic approaches like genetic algorithms, but also for evaluating gradients. It can lead to a vast speed-up and should be invoked whenever possible. Check the examples (or the API) for details.

Documentation: https://fraunhoferiwes.github.io/iwopy.docs/index.html

Source code: https://github.com/FraunhoferIWES/iwopy

PyPi reference: https://pypi.org/project/iwopy/

Requirements

The supported Python versions are:

• Python 3.7
• Python 3.8
• Python 3.9
• Python 3.10

Installation

Virtual Python environment

We recommend working in a Python virtual environment and install iwopy there. Such an environment can be created by

python -m venv /path/to/my_venv

and afterwards be activated by

source /path/to/my_venv/bin/activate

Note that in the above commands /path/to/my_venv is a placeholder that should be replaced by a path to a (non-existing) folder of your choice, for example ~/venv/iwopy.

All subsequent installation commands via pip can then be executed directly within the active environment without changes. After your work with iwopy is done you can leave the environment by the command deactivate.

Standard users

As a standard user, you can install the latest release via pip by

pip install iwopy

This in general corresponds to the main branch at github. Alternatively, you can decide to install the latest pre-release developments (non-stable) by

pip install git+https://github.com/FraunhoferIWES/iwopy@dev#egg=iwopy

Developers

The first step as a developer is to clone the iwopy repository by

git clone https://github.com/FraunhoferIWES/iwopy.git

Enter the root directory by cd iwopy. Then you can either install from this directory via

pip install -e .

Alternatively, add the iwopy directory to your PYTHONPATH, e.g. by running

export PYTHONPATH=`pwd`:$PYTHONPATH

from the root iwopy directory, and then

pip install -r requirements.txt