[mlpack] Plans for mlpack releases and features

[Tharindu Mathew]

Thanks Ryan. This is quite a comprehensive answer. I will see whether I can
make some contribution to one of the todos.

On Tue, Jan 1, 2019 at 6:00 PM Ryan Curtin <ryan at ratml.org> wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 01, 2019 at 02:20:21PM -0500, Tharindu Mathew wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > Happy new year to the mlpack community!
> >
> > Overall, I'm trying to understand whether mlpack is actively developed (I
> > understand it was an academic project taken up 10 years ago, and much has
> > changed with everything (at least in the news) mostly being about deep
> > learning now), or whether there's an active interest in adding more
> > features and getting more releases out. I was wondering how one could
> > contribute, ie whether there's a priority based feature/bug tracker.
>
> Hey Tharindu,
>
> Happy new year!
>
> mlpack is definitely still actively developed---there is active PR
> reviewing, merging, and responding to issues basically every day from
> lots of different people.  The project has come a long way from its
> origins at Georgia Tech as an academic project, like you pointed out.
>
> There is not currently a formal release schedule but I would like to
> have one (time has not permitted that though).  One of the big problems
> right now is the difficulty of a release; it is a tedious process that
> takes me something like 4+ hours of work, so, I have been working
> towards an automated release process.  But time is short, so that isn't
> done yet.
>
> A lot of recent work has gone into splitting out the optimization
> framework into a different project called ensmallen:
>
>   https://github.com/mlpack/ensmallen
>
> I can say that definitely there is active interest in adding more
> features.  Here are some future directions that I intend to go, and that
> I have heard others intend to go:
>
>  * Automatically generated Markdown for each of the bindings.  I have
>    most of this working now, but I need to get the Markdown->HTML parts
>    working right.  See
>    https://github.com/mlpack/mlpack/issues/1511.
>
>  * GPU support via Bandicoot: https://gitlab.com/conradsnicta/bandicoot
>    Personally this is high on my priority list and I am hoping in the
>    next handful of weeks to start devoting more time to that.
>
>  * A binding to the command-line or Python (or other languages) for
>    neural networks: https://github.com/mlpack/mlpack/issues/1254
>
>  * Callbacks for ensmallen optimizers:
>    https://github.com/mlpack/mlpack/issues/1481
>
>  * Bindings to Go (there is a PR open), Julia (I am nearly done with
>    this), and R (I started but did not get far).
>
>  * There are lots of mostly-finished PRs open that just need a little
>    more to get them across the finish line.
>
>  * Summer of Code 2019: we'll apply, although the organization
>    application period isn't open quite yet.  A lot of work goes into
>    GSoC every year.
>
> That's not a comprehensive list for sure.  Others may have other things
> that they are working on too. :)
>
> I'm hoping to release mlpack 3.1.0 with better documentation, but I
> think maybe in the next week or two I'll release mlpack 3.0.5 with some
> backported bugfixes.  There's not really a formal process of any sort
> for this, and if anyone else wanted to take over the process of
> releasing the library and managing that I of course would have no issue
> with it.
>
> There's not really a prioritized bugtracker, although some Github issues
> do have labels for priority.  Honestly I spend a significant portion of
> my time just trying to stay above water with the different requests I
> receive and the PRs that need to be reviewed. :)
>
> I hope this helps!  I would say right now the mlpack community is the
> most active it has ever been.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Ryan
>
> --
> Ryan Curtin    | "And do not attempt to grow a brain!"
> ryan at ratml.org |   - Sgt. Howard Payne
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>


-- 
Regards,
Tharindu Mathew
http://tharindumathew.com
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