VowpalWabbit/vowpal_wabbit 9.6.0 on GitHub

Large Action Spaces

This introduces the Large Actions Spaces (LAS) feature. LAS is an algorithm that lets exploration happen efficiently when there are a large number of actions in a contextual bandit dataset. The main idea behind it is to eliminate actions that are similar and explore only over the most diverse actions in the dataset. For more information, see the LAS wiki page.

Style Changes

This release introduces additional style changes to make VW code formatting more consistent. Variable and type names are snake_case, constants and macros are UPPERCASE, and the VW::details namespace is used to hide implementation details.

Faster Compile Times

Through @jackgerrits's changes to some header files, VW now builds much faster! On one machine, compile times went from around 30 seconds to 17.

Click here to see all changes in this release

What's Changed

build: remove FORCE_COLORED_OUTPUT by @jackgerrits in #4213
style: fix some more style issues by @jackgerrits in #4211
feat: implement serialization and deserialization for model deltas by @jackgerrits in #4222
chore: update boost_math, fmt, vcpkg, zlib by @bassmang in #4223
style: another round of style updates by @jackgerrits in #4224
style: update style and namespacing for constants by @jackgerrits in #4226
fix: [LAS] don't use shared features during SVD calculation by @olgavrou in #4225
fix: [LAS] ensure vw prediction makes it to exploration by @olgavrou in #4227
fix: VW should not add anything to namespace std by @jackgerrits in #4230
style: update style of label_type_t by @jackgerrits in #4229
test: [epsilon decay] find champ change in simulator by @bassmang in #4228
refactor: reduce build time by @jackgerrits in #4232
feat: [LAS] filter out (potentially) more actions than d based on singular values by @olgavrou in #4234
build: do not add sse flags when doing MacOS arm cross build by @jackgerrits in #4235
style: update label type to all caps by @bassmang in #4236
style: update prediction type to all caps by @bassmang in #4237
build: allow VW_CXX_STANDARD to be provided by consumer of VW by @jackgerrits in #4238
refactor: remove beam.h by @jackgerrits in #4241
style: more style fixes by @jackgerrits in #4240
style: another round of style updates by @jackgerrits in #4242
feat: [LAS] sparse Rademacher by @olgavrou in #4243
chore: [LAS] remove unused implementations and set max actions default by @olgavrou in #4247
refactor: move LabelDict namespace items into other namespaces, add const by @jackgerrits in #4245
fix: don't run tests with iterations (and a simulator) with valgrind … by @olgavrou in #4251
chore: [LAS] remove compile time flag and its own custom CI by @olgavrou in #4249
fix: don't run tests with iterations with asan and ubsan by @olgavrou in #4253
fix: [LAS] block size should never be zero by @olgavrou in #4252
fix: [LAS] always return full predictions by @olgavrou in #4255
refactor: use model_utils for save_load in las by @jackgerrits in #4263
refactor: remove unused field in sparse_iterator by @jackgerrits in #4259
test: add make_args for easier workspace creation in tests by @jackgerrits in #4267
ci: change caching for benchmark job by @jackgerrits in #4269
build: resolve cmake version check TODO in DetectCXXStandard.cmake by @jackgerrits in #4268
fix!: save/load entire tag in flat_example + bump version to 9.6 by @bassmang in #4266
test: apply make_args across test projects by @jackgerrits in #4272
fix: This patches a bug with flat_example collision cleanup by @mrucker in #4265
fix: explore_eval don't learn if logged action not in predicted actions by @olgavrou in #4262
fix: [LAS] full predictions regardless of learn/predict path by @olgavrou in #4273

Full Changelog: 9.5.0...9.6.0