8.8.0

• There has significant work in streamlining and improving support for the Python bindings. Thanks @peterychang! (#1928)
• The Conditional Contextual Bandit reduction got merged in, this reduction allows you to express problems where there are multiple slots to fill. See here for the wiki page. (#1816) (#1995) (#2078) (#2141)
• CMake install targets have been added to the build files (#2172) (#2135)
  • Now you can find and link VW easily in other projects:

  find_package(VowpalWabbit REQUIRED)
  add_executable(my_exe main.cpp)
  target_link_libraries(my_exe PRIVATE VowpalWabbit::vw)

• Slim VW got merged into master. This is an experimental lightweight inference runtime that supports a subset of VW features. (#2028)
• Bug fixes! (see all changes below)

Internal improvements

We are at work overhauling and modernizing VW, some of the relevant changes on that front are below:

• Migrate c arrays to std::array (#2094)
• Make hashing constexpr in C++14 and unify rotl impl (#2093)
• Make is_example_header const (#2095)
• Allow constructor arugments for calloc_or_throw (#2070)
• Learner now holds type erased reduction data (#2060)
• Use numeric_limits (#2107)
• Unify throwing of exceptions to use vw_exception instead of bare std:exception (#2171)
• Cb explore adf atomization (#2069)
• Refactor cb_adf reduction (#2057)
• Move cb_sample to be class based (#2087)
• Atomize topk reduction (#2050)
• Atomize autolink reduction (#2047)

Other notable changes:

• --version now includes commit id if available at build time (#1951)
• Macos added as CI target (#1965)
• Allow escaped command lines (#2157)
• Update MSVC Toolchain to v14.1 (#1988)
• Multiinstance mode for multiline examples (#1934)

All Changes

Click to expand all changes in 8.8.0

• Fix warning (#2179)
• Add/exclude new folders in the python MANIFEST (#2180)
• fix some warnings (#2177)
• Fixes for Learning2Search Subsystem (#2176)
• Install rapidjson too (#2174)
• Use standard save/load functionality for sklearn Python lib (#2142)
• Default the label for CCB when reading cached labels (#2158)
• Allow escaped command lines (#2157)
• Fix header install locations (#2172)
• Unify throwing of exceptions to use vw_exception instead of bare std::exception (#2171)
• Disallow combining no_sample and cb_sample (#2148)
• Fix memory leak in search.cc (#2167)
• Fix unlabeled sgd examples (#2162)
• Add deleter for parsed examples (#2153)
• Fix misinterpreted negative option (#2149)
• Catalina segfault mitigation (#2152)
• Implement CCB type binding for Python (#2141)
• Update test dependencies (#2147)
• Fix typo: setup.py is not in vowpal_wabbit/python (#2143)
• Throw instead of silently append nullptr when types don't match (#2139)
• Fix variadic macro warning (#2138)
• Create testing harness for cluster operation of VW and add test (#2134)
• Improve VW support for CMake install process (#2135)
• Properly support default build type, fix comment, define project version (#2133)
• Update cluster readme to markdown, cleanup, format code (#2131)
• Fix slim build and various CMake fixes (#2130)
• Update CMakeLists.txt (#2127)
• fixed docker image version (#2126)
• Fix segfault when ring_size argument is not supplied (#2125)
• Python: fix deprecated joblib (#2068)
• forgot to set a parameter (#2114)
• Add option to turn off sampling for CCB (#2096)
• Remove redunant copy from CCB reduction (#2112)
• Fix segfault in CCB - MTR must clean up predictions allocated for cost sensitive examples (#2111)
• Softmaxpredfile (#2113)
• Update vw_types.natvis (#2109)
• Use numeric_limits (#2107)
• Refactor cb_adf reduction (#2057)
• Fix an LGTM warning in recommend (#2105)
• Update CMakeSettings.json (#2104)
• Remove all usages of "using namespace std" (#2071)
• Fix lots of warnings and clang-tidy suggestions (#2085)
• Make hashing constexpr in C++14 and unify rotl impl (#2093)
• Migrate c arrays to std::array (#2094)
• Cb explore adf initialize vars (#2102)
• "-q" as default nc delay option (#2098)
• Move cb_sample to be class based (#2087)
• Cb explore adf atomization (#2069)
• Fix OSX builds when not using Anaconda. (#2097)
• Mac Os X CI tests fixes (#2035)
• Make is_example_header const (#2095)
• Enable use of newer standards (#2092)
• mitigate clang-cl SIMD issue (#2091)
• Java Binding Improvements (#2081)
• fix: softmax can overflow (#2088)
• Fix type issues and windows version in cmake file (#2084)
• Atomize topk reduction (#2050)
• Update badges in Python readme (#2086)
• pdrop support for cb/ccb dsjson (#2078)
• Add CMake option to force color codes (#2082)
• Atomize autolink reduction (#2047)
• Add forwarding header for commonly used objects in reductions headers (#2080)
• Fix initilizer (#2073)
• Force OSX to build .so files for python (#2061)
• Allow constructor arugments for calloc_or_throw (#2070)
• Propagate cache reading failures (#2062)
• Learner now holds type erased reduction data (#2060)
• Remove unnecessary null checks (#2067)
• Remove most usages of unsafe sprintf function (#2054)
• Fix LGTM Java build issues (#2063)
• Add unit tests to coverage report (#2053)
• remove copy from closure, and do by reference (#2058)
• Limit python install parallelisation to number of cpus (#2056)
• Update noexcept specifier (#2048)
• Fix memory leak in CCB prediction (#2065)
• Constrain doxygen input dirs, remove graphs (#2055)
• vw_slim into master (#2028)
• DBG helper and new natvis (#2042)
• Multiinstance mode for multiline examples (#1934)
• Properly add CCB index feature with stride/offset (#2041)
• Ataymano/memory leaks fixes (#2020)
• Implement explicit included actions for CCB (#1995)
• Add VW-JNI SNAPSHOT publishing to nightly build
• Fix compile errors on centos (#2005)
• Install all headers as fix for missing headers in installed library (#1994)
• Add comment to to tovw to clarify usage (#1999)
• Add comment to learner.h (#1997)
• Update MSVC Toolchain to v14.1 (#1988)
• Remove deprecated projects and old scripts (#1992)
• fixed command line argument retrieval from parsed model (#1993)
• Fix implicit fallthrough warning and unused variable warning in GCC (#1984)
• Replace nanpattern and infpattern with std:: equivalents (#1983)
• Migrate Travis to migrated Docker image + cleanup old files (#1982)
• Add Azure pipeline for Linux CI (#1981)
• Add constexpr and noexcept to some functions, cleanup unused functions (#1985)
• vw-hyperopt. Passing additional command when training and validating (#1959)
• Ensure vw object cannot be moved or copied (#1986)
• Fix building GCOV with Clang (#1980)
• Update RunTests to be able to find binaries in the build directory (#1979)
• Test and unify usage of ec_is_example_header (#1970)
• Remove thread_local_storage from ccb (#1976)
• Remove hard requirement for git during Windows build (#1977)
• Action scores print tag (#1971)
• Fix some warnings (#1973)
• Remove two makefiles that were missed in Cmake change (#1969)
• cd_adf: Added importance weight probability clipping for cb_type mtr, ips, dr (#1952)
• Fix file permissions for macos CI scripts (#1966)
• Add macos pipeline (#1965)
• Add LICENSE to the python source package (#1963)
• Add source info to VW Nuget description, and update copyright years. (#1962)
• Update new_version script (#1956)
• Update python README to reflect new build proceedures (#1961)
• Conditional Contextual Bandit (#1816)
• Java Maven pom.xml.in update (#1954)
• Add git commit to output of --version (#1951)
• cover and regcb: data.counter++ only in learn examples (not predict) (#1950)
• Spark/JNI multipass fixes and AllReduce quiet support (#1949)
• cb_explore_adf: fixed bug when resetting cb_type + improvements (#1948)
• vw-hyperopt (add support for passing namespaces) (#1941)
• Tau first should count only learn examples (not predict) (#1944)
• Python distributions (#1928)
• Enable suppressing NuGet version tag for official builds (#1946)
• Fix predict path for cb_explore_adf First (#1939)
• CS simulator v3.0 (#1932)
• cs/cli/vw_label.h: Avoid to throw for precision issues (#1933)
• Remove hard-coded version in Windows CI package gen script. (#1936)
• Fix clear labels the correct way (#1930)