ADMB Project

ADMB-11.3
Released May 22, 2015

Describe changes and features for each release.

Release Notes

The goals for all releases are

• Continually improve algorithms
• Add new requested features
• Correct defects (bugs)
• Continually streamline installation and build process
• Continually improve and update documentation

ADMB-trunk

Todo Priorities

• [ ] Add Multi-CPU Support (High)
• [ ] Write Design Documentation (High)
• [ ] Write Developer Documentation (High)
• [ ] Atan2

ADMB-11.3

• Steve Martell's changes to gamma function.
• Bug fixes

ADMB-11.2

Changes and Improvements

• Default safe libs include overflows checks.
• Changes to derivative checker prompts.
• Added description documentation to the programming interface.
• Improvements to admb scripts (see New Features).
• Added more unit tests for improved code coverage.
• Fixed reported and found bugs.
• Fixed compilers warnings.
• Add more checks in admb scripts to test for errors.
• Added Quickstart*.txt markup documentation for building and using ADMB.

• User interface: Windows admb bash script has a .sh extension to avoid conflict with batch file. So in MinGW or Cygwin shell, user will need to use

  [~/admb/examples/admb/simple/]$ ~/admb/admb.sh simple
  

• Fixed 'admb -d' for unix, mingw and cygwin shells.

• Able to use Rtools for building, but will need to use the utilities\make.exe for building.
• Improved the build by restructuring and reworking the GNUmakefiles file.
• Able to use parallel build option (-j) with verify and contrib targets for faster builds.

• To build with optimized libraries use fast option (-f) instead of (-o).

  $ admb -f model.tpl
  

• Fix shared (libadmb.so) and dynamic (admb.dll) builds.

  [~/admb/]$ make shared
  
  C:\admb\> utilities\make shared
  

Note — This is great for testing linker errors.

• Added contributed method to save gradient values to a file. Contributed by Jiashen Tang and David Fournier.

  REPORT_SECTION
    save_gradients(gradients);
  

• Added back the MacOS binary ADMBTerminal app.

• Packaged mingw compilers (32 and 64 bit) with windows installers.

• admb scripts can determine which parser (tpl2cpp or tpl2rem) to use.

  [~/admb/examples/admb-re/union/]$ ~/admb/admb union
  

Note: Option -r is no longer needed to build the random effects model.

• Separate build/dist and build/debug for easily switching between the both.
• Allow > 2GB buffers for MinGW-w64 builds.

New Supported Compilers

• GNU C++ 4.8 compiler
• Apple XCode 6
• MinGW 64 Bit
• Microsoft C++ 2013

Note: Borland 5.5 compiler is no longer supported.

New Features

• Add debug target to build files.

  $ make debug
  

• Add shared target to build files (Unix only).

  $ make shared
  

• admb scripts can be called directly and do not require setting enviromental variables ADMB_HOME and PATH.

  For Unix,

  [~/admb/example/admb/simple/]$ ~/admb/admb simple
  

  For Windows,

  C:\admb\example\admb\simple\> C:\admb\admb simple
  

• admb scripts can build C++ source files and link.

  For Unix,

  [~/admb/example/admb/simple/]$ ~/admb/admb simple.tpl mysource.cpp
  

  For Windows,

  C:\admb\example\admb\simple\> C:\admb\admb simple.tpl mysource.cpp
  

• admb scripts have a new option -f for optimized library "OPT_LIB".

  For Unix,

  [~/admb/example/admb/simple/]$ ~/admb/admb -f simple.tpl mysource.cpp
  

  For Windows,

  C:\admb\example\admb\simple\> C:\admb\admb -f simple.tpl mysource.cpp
  

• admb scripts have a new option -c for only building object files.

  Both commands below will only build simple.o and mysource.o compiled object files.
  The model application will not be built.

  For Unix,

  [~/admb/example/admb/simple/]$ ~/admb/admb -c simple.tpl mysource.cpp
  

  For Windows,

  C:\admb\example\admb\simple\> C:\admb\admb -c simple.tpl mysource.cpp
  

  Note: This is the almost the same as using 'adcomp mysource'.

Priorities: Next Release

The following are planned or requested features for the next release.

• [ ] Add Threading Support (High)
• [ ] Write Design Documentation (High)
• [ ] Write Developer Documentation (High)
• [ ] Atan2

ADMB-11.1

ADMB-11.1
Released May 10, 2013

Changes

• Updated Visual Studio nmake build files.

• Improved Unix build files.

• Only outdated files are rebuilt.

• Fast parallel building with source distribution

  [~/admb/]$ make -j
  

• Building from source will create distribution folder in 'build/dist' instead of 'build/os-compiler-arch'.

• Combined mulitple libraries to a single library 'libadmb.a'.

• Reverted some algorithms to previous version-9 code.

• The compilation scripts (adcomp, adlink, admb) compile in "safe" mode by default.

• added 's' option with the Ctrl^C

• contributed libraries are built with the main libraries.

• flex is not needed to build ADMB, but it is needed to develop the tpl2cpp.lex and tpl2rem.lex files.

• Improved documentation.

New Features

• admb script can now build tpl models without the need to set ADMB_HOME or PATH. For example,

  [~/admb-11.1/examples/admb/simple/]$ ~/admb-11.1/admb simple
  

• Functions from user-contributed packages can be loaded from directory 'contrib'. Read 'contrib/README.txt'.

• New class 'init_table' to read input data into a matrix.

• New function sumsq() to calculate sum of squared values, equivalent to norm2().

• New constant PI for 3.141593... Makes models more portable than using M_PI or other compiler-specific constants.

• New shell command 'ad2csv' to write binary files to screen or to a file.

• admb is now able to handle .obj, .cpp and .tpl files on the commandline.

  For example,

  $ admb model.tpl supportcode.cpp anotherfile.cpp
  

  Output is executable 'model'.

Bug Fixes

• Catch exit errors for adlink and adcomp.
• Watch out for spaces in admb scripts
• Fix memory leaks.

Changes 9.2 to 11.0

• Fixed gammln functions
• Fixed configure script
• Fixed atan2 functions
• Documentation changes
• Script changes
• Various bug fixes

For help and support, email users@admb-project.org.