Getting started as a developer - first steps

Developers
1

Hey guys,

this is Franzi and I am new on the developer side of Stan. In the future, I would like to contribute a new function to Stan and provide an interface to RStan. But now, I am stuck with the very first steps.

I cloned the GitHub respository math and try to get it run locally. I use Windows 10 and a Visual Studio Project that consists of all files in the math repository. I already included all necessary include-paths but there are still more than 800 error messages like this:

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It seems that it does not recognise the Sundials Packages. Do I have to install Sundials first?

I would be very thankful for a response! Please let me know if any information is missing. Since I am new I am not yet familiar with formulating technical questions.

Best, Franzi

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2

So what exactly did you try to run?

3

In Visual Studio I opened the project and one .hpp file.
Then it starts to do some background tasks. After finishing these tasks it shows all the error messages.

4

Sundials and other dependencies are in lib after cloning, but you need to build them, as explained in the Installation section here: GitHub - stan-dev/math: The Stan Math Library is a C++ template library for automatic differentiation of any order using forward, reverse, and mixed modes. It includes a range of built-in functions for probabilistic modeling, linear algebra, and equation solving.. Then you can build and run a program that uses stan math, like the example

#include <stan/math.hpp>
#include <iostream>

int main() {
  std::cout << "log normal(1 | 2, 3)="
            << stan::math::normal_log(1, 2, 3)
            << std::endl;
}

I don’t know much about VS Code or whether you can initialize the build process from there somehow.

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5

Just a warning that you probably need to use gcc / clang toolchain (not sure how these work with Visual Studio).

There have been some problems with MSVC before (template problems) but not sure what is the current situation.

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6

There is a page of tips in Doxygen which might be helpful: Stan Math Library: Windows Development Tips

As a worthwhile alternative, I use WSL2 with Ubuntu 20.04 which is IMO by far easier and better performing.

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7

MSVC compiler is still not officially supported for Stan. It should work with the new UCRT toolchain, but have not tried it within Visual Studio yet.

I would second what @maedoc suggests, using WSL.

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8

Thanks for your suggestion. I’m still struggling with Windows :sweat_smile: Now, I’ll try the way with WSL2.

Which program would you recommend to work with instead of Visual Studio?

9

Visual Studio Code works well with WSL2, just be sure to install the extension “Remote - WSL”.

10

Thanks a lot @jtimonen! Now with a WSL the example code runs :)

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