Evoptool: Evolutionary Optimization Tool
Contents
Evoptool Team
- Matteo Matteucci - matteucci [AT] elet.polimi.it
- Luigi Malagò - malago [AT] elet.polimi.it
- Gabriele Valentini - gvalentini [AT] iridia.ulb.ac.be
- Cucci Davide - cucci [AT] elet.polimi.it
Formerly involved
- Emanuele Corsano
Description
Evolutionary Optimization Tool (Evoptool) is an open source optimization tool, distributed under GNU General Public License, implementing meta-heuristics based on the Evolutionary Algorithms paradigm, that aims to provide a common platform for the development and test of new algorithms, in order to facilitate the performance comparison activity. Evoptool offers a wide set of benchmark problems, from classical toy samples to more complex tasks, and a collection of algorithm implementations from Genetic Algorithms and Estimation of Distribution Algorithms paradigms. Evoptool is flexible, easy to extend, also with algorithms based on other approaches other from EAs.
Mailing List
http://groups.google.com/group/evoptool
Download
svn checkout https://svn.ws.dei.polimi.it/evoptool/
Installation
Follow these steps in order to compile evoptool
1. Download source code from svn https://svn.ws.dei.polimi.it/evoptool/
User Password
Refer to trunk for the lastest (instable) version of evoptool
2. First you need to manually compile the l1_logreg-0.8.2
package, http://www.stanford.edu/~boyd/l1_logreg/
whose source are already included in the evoptool repository. In order to do that follow the instrunctions in
README.evoptool
in the l1_logreg-0.8.2
directory
Next, compile <id_dist/code> following the instructions in <code>README.evoptool<code> in the <code><id_dist/code> folder
3. Then you need to compile a module at a time. Each module is included in a different folder. To compile a module, from go to the module source folder and do make lib. For instance, for the module named <code>common
cd common/src make lib cd ..
Compile modules in the following order
common functions ga eda stochastic
To clean a module, do
make clean
from the module source directory
4. Go to core
module and type
make exe
Binary files will be copied in the bin
directory in the root as well as the bin
directory of the core
module
Required packages
- Libraries
- gtkmm-2.4
- glademm-2.4
- gthread-2.0
- sigc++-2.0
- opencv (see for instance http://www.samontab.com/web/2011/06/installing-opencv-2-2-in-ubuntu-11-04/)
- gsl
- gslcblas
- libxml++-2.6
- Software
- gnuplot
Running
Right now evoptool
only runs as a script. GUI is not maintained in the latest version.
The evoptool
binary file is supposed to be run in the bin
directory in the root, this is because right now the script looks for some configuration files, for the instances of the problems, and temp directories. If you want to run the script from other directories, you just need to copy in that directory the evoptool-file
directory that you find in the bin
directory. Link such directory instead of copying it is not safe if you run multiple scripts at the same time, since output files will be shared.
To run the algorithm you need to enter as input an xml file. For instance you can run
./evoptool evoptool-file/examples/unitTestOneMax.xml
The evoptool-file/example
directory contains a set of xml files for different benchmarks and different algorithms.
Take a loot at the example.xml
file for the documentation on hoe to set the parameters for an each execution of evoptool
Each execution of evoptool
produces a set of files as output. You can find all files in evoptool-file/temp
directory. Plus a tar.gz file containing such files can be produced at the end of the execution of <evoptool>. See the xml file for details.
evoptool-file/temp/data
contains the raw data of the statistics according to the xml file
evoptool-file/temp/gnuplot
contains the gnuplot files to produce images of the statistics
evoptool-file/temp/image
contains images of the statistics produced according to the xml file
evoptool-file/temp/support/code>
contains logs
Implement a new benchmark
1) In the constructor you hou have to set
_minFitness = 0; _maxFitness = size; _knownSolution = true;
To create a new algorithm
1) Add a line in evoptool-file/exec-scripts/example.xml as a documenation for the parameters of your algorithm. Choose a new Id for your algorithm Types indicates then type of the parameters (the order is important) that will must be specified in the xml file (see <algo>) and are passed to the constructor of the algorithm when the object is instantiated I = integer D = double B = bool
2) modify the file core/src/XMLParser.cpp and insert an new entry for your algorithm in bool XMLParser::parseAlgorithms for instance
{ Evoptool::DEUM, 5, (char*) "IDDDI" } // Pop, percElitism, percSelec, CoolRate, GibbsIterations where the first argument is the class of the algorithm the second the number of paramers parsed in the xml file the third the types of each parameter
3) add a case in the switch that follows in bool XMLParser::parseAlgorithms
for instance case Evoptool::EXTENDEDFCA: algos[i] = new extendedFCA(intVal[0], doubleVal[0], doubleVal[1], intVal[1], intVal[2], params->rng); algos[i]->initAlgorithm(params->task); break;
where the algorithm is instantiated
4) Add an entry for your algorithm in core/src/Algorithms.h
5) Add an entry in Evoptool.h
typedef enum { DEUM } Algorithms;
6) Implement a new algorithm
All algorithm must implement intiAlgorithm, and call Algorithm::initAlgorithm same thing for Algorithm::run();
Run an algorithm in a C++ program
The simplest way to do this is to create a new submodule
1) copy the example "exampleRunAlgorithm" in a new folder (that we call myexample) in evoptool/core/src/
2) modify the Makefile see comments in the file for more details
3) edit the main() function in the source file, if you need you can create other c++ and h files in the same folder and include them according to your needs
4) from evoptool/core/src/myexample run make bin the bin file is create in evoptool/core/bin and evoptool/bin NOTICE THAT evoptool/core/bin is deleted after a make cleanall
5) from evoptool/bin run ./myexample (where myexample is the name of the bin file you specified in the Makefile)