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Installation#

Requirements#

SMAC is written in python3 and therefore requires an environment with python>=3.9.

Info

SMAC is tested on Linux and Mac machines with python >=3.9.

SetUp#

We recommend using Anaconda to create and activate an environment:

conda create -n SMAC python=3.10
conda activate SMAC

Install SMAC#

You can install SMAC either using PyPI or Conda-forge.

PYPI#

To install SMAC with PyPI call:

pip install smac

Or alternatively, clone the environment from GitHub directly:

git clone https://github.com/automl/SMAC3.git && cd SMAC3
pip install -e ".[dev]"

Conda-forge#

Installing SMAC from the conda-forge channel can be achieved by adding conda-forge to your channels with:

conda config --add channels conda-forge
conda config --set channel_priority strict

You must have conda >= 4.9 installed. To update conda or check your current conda version, please follow the instructions from the official anaconda documentation. Once the conda-forge channel has been enabled, SMAC can be installed with:

conda install smac

Read SMAC feedstock for more details.

Running SMAC with pyrfr#

starting from 2.4.0, SMAC uses random forest from sklearn instead of random forest from pyrfr as the default surrogate model for HPO tasks. However, you could still use the old pyrfr surrogate model by calling smac.facade.old.HyperparameterOptimizationRFRFacade and smac.facade.old.MultiFidelityRFRFacade.

The Random Forest used in SMAC requires SWIG as a build dependency. You could install swig either on the system level e.g. using the following command for Linux: 

apt-get install swig

Or install swig inside of an already created conda environment using:

conda install gxx_linux-64 gcc_linux-64 swig

And then install smac with the pyrfr option: 

pip install smac[pyrfr]

pyrfr on Windows (native or via WSL, experimental)#

SMAC can be installed under Windows in a WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux). You can find an instruction on how to do this here: Experimental. However, this is experimental and might not work in each case. If you would like to suggest any changes, please let us know.