protostan
The goal of protostan is to provide an API for
Stan based solely on passing
(and returning) protobuf
messages. The advantages of this approach are:
- As long as a language has protobuf (version 3) support, a
Stan interface can be written using solely the language and
its protobuf package without the need to interface with C++.
- Protobuf has impressive
multi-language support, with apparent priority given to the
C++ interface among others. Other languages important to Stan
(e.g.-R, Python) also have solid support.
- Protobuf deals with strongly-typed
data
and offers well-defined mappings from those types to different
language-specific types.
We would like to wrap enough of the API so that a first interface
for a language could be written using protobuf without touching
the C++ API. For the time being this repository should contain:
- Stan-related .proto files for other projects.
- Versions of Stan external API functions with only protobuf
messages as input and output types.
Location of Protocol Buffer Message Definitions
Message definitions are found in the proto subdirectory.
Quickstart
- This repository assumes that find_library, as written, will find
gtest, protobuf, and stanc. If that's a tall order for your system,
use this dev repo instead:
cd ${DEV_DIR}
git clone https://github.com/sakrejda/stan-dev.git
cd stan-dev
If you have all that available already:
cd ${DEV_DIR}
git clone https://github.com/sakrejda/protostan.git
cd protostan
- If using the dev repo, set option to build protostan and any missing dependencies.
By default this includes all the required dependencies.
...... HOW?
- Set up a build environment and build.
With the dev repo:
cd ${BUILD_DIR}
cmake ${DEV_DIR}/stan-dev
make
With the stand-alone:
cd ${BUILD_DIR}
cmake ${DEV_DIR}/protostan
make
-
Run tests
cd ${BUILD_DIR}
ctest
-
Installation, currently none.