CHANGELOG.md

Changelog

Release 1.1.0

Api Extensions

• evaluation: New package for repeating the same experiment with multiple seeds and aggregating the results. #1074 #1141
  • The module evaluation.launchers for parallelization is currently in alpha state.
• data:
  • Batch:
    • Add methods to_dict and to_list_of_dicts. #1063 #1098
    • Add methods to_numpy_ and to_torch_. #1098, #1117
    • Add __eq__ (semantic equality check). #1098
    • keys() deprecated in favor of get_keys() (needed to make iteration consistent with naming) #1105.
  • data.collector:
    • Collector:
      • Introduced BaseCollector as a base class for all collectors. #1123
      • Add method close #1063
      • Method reset is now more granular (new flags controlling behavior). #1063
    • CollectStats: Add convenience constructor with_autogenerated_stats. #1063
• trainer:
  • Trainers can now control whether collectors should be reset prior to training. #1063
• policy:
  • introduced attribute in_training_step that is controlled by the trainer. #1123
  • policy automatically set to eval mode when collecting and to train mode when updating. #1123
• highlevel:
  • SamplingConfig:
    • Add support for batch_size=None. #1077
    • Add training_seed for explicit seeding of training and test environments, the test_seed is inferred from training_seed. #1074
  • experiment:
    • Experiment now has a name attribute, which can be set using ExperimentBuilder.with_name and which determines the default run name and therefore the persistence subdirectory. It can still be overridden in Experiment.run(), the new parameter name being run_name rather than experiment_name (although the latter will still be interpreted correctly). #1074 #1131
    • Add class ExperimentCollection for the convenient execution of multiple experiment runs #1131
    • ExperimentBuilder:
      • Add method build_seeded_collection for the sound creation of multiple experiments with varying random seeds #1131
      • Add method copy to facilitate the creation of multiple experiments from a single builder #1131
  • env:
    • Added new VectorEnvType called SUBPROC_SHARED_MEM_AUTO and used in for Atari and Mujoco venv creation. #1141
• Loggers can now restore the logged data into python by using the new restore_logged_data method. #1074
• utils:
  • net.continuous.Critic:
    • Add flag apply_preprocess_net_to_obs_only to allow the preprocessing network to be applied to the observations only (without the actions concatenated), which is essential for the case where we want to reuse the actor's preprocessing network #1128
  • torch_utils (new module)
    • Added context managers torch_train_mode and policy_within_training_step #1123
  • print
    • DataclassPPrintMixin now supports outputting a string, not just printing the pretty repr. #1141

Fixes

• CriticFactoryReuseActor: Enable the Critic flag apply_preprocess_net_to_obs_only for continuous critics, fixing the case where we want to reuse an actor's preprocessing network for the critic (affects usages of the experiment builder method with_critic_factory_use_actor with continuous environments) #1128
• atari_network.DQN:
  • Fix constructor input validation #1128
  • Fix output_dim not being set if features_only=True and output_dim_added_layer is not None #1128

Internal Improvements

• Collectors rely less on state, the few stateful things are stored explicitly instead of through a .data attribute. #1063
• Introduced a first iteration of a naming convention for vars in Collectors. #1063
• Generally improved readability of Collector code and associated tests (still quite some way to go). #1063
• Improved typing for exploration_noise and within Collector. #1063
• Better variable names related to model outputs (logits, dist input etc.). #1032
• Improved typing for actors and critics, using Tianshou classes like Actor, ActorProb, etc., instead of just nn.Module. #1032
• Added interfaces for most Actor and Critic classes to enforce the presence of forward methods. #1032
• Simplified PGPolicy forward by unifying the dist_fn interface (see associated breaking change). #1032
• Use .mode of distribution instead of relying on knowledge of the distribution type. #1032
• Exception no longer raised on len of empty Batch. #1084
• tests and examples are covered by mypy. #1077
• NetBase is more used, stricter typing by making it generic. #1077
• Use explicit multiprocessing context for creating Pipe in subproc.py. #1102

Breaking Changes

• data:
  • Collector:
    • Removed .data attribute. #1063
    • Collectors no longer reset the environment on initialization. Instead, the user might have to call reset expicitly or pass reset_before_collect=True . #1063
    • Removed no_grad argument from collect method (was unused in tianshou). #1123
  • Batch:
    • Fixed iter(Batch(...) which now behaves the same way as Batch(...).__iter__(). Can be considered a bugfix. #1063
    • The methods to_numpy and to_torch in are not in-place anymore (use to_numpy_ or to_torch_ instead). #1098, #1117
• Logging:
  • BaseLogger.prepare_dict_for_logging is now abstract. #1074
  • Removed deprecated and unused BasicLogger (only affects users who subclassed it). #1074
• VectorEnvs now return an array of info-dicts on reset instead of a list. #1063
• Changed interface of dist_fn in PGPolicy and all subclasses to take a single argument in both continuous and discrete cases. #1032
• utils.net.common.Recurrent now receives and returns a RecurrentStateBatch instead of a dict. #1077
• AtariEnvFactory constructor (in examples, so not really breaking) now requires explicit train and test seeds. #1074
• EnvFactoryRegistered now requires an explicit test_seed in the constructor. #1074

Tests

• Fixed env seeding it test_sac_with_il.py so that the test doesn't fail randomly. #1081

Dependencies

• DeepDiff added to help with diffs of batches in tests. #1098
• Bumped black, idna, pillow
• New extra "eval"

Started after v1.0.0