Stan command line interface - new proposal

Developers
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preliminary proposal for a new command line interface here: https://github.com/stan-dev/design-docs/blob/cmdstan3/designs/0005-cmdstan3.md

I think this would make a lot of things easier going forward - feedback welcome!

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+1

Just thinking out loud after reading your proposal. I do much of this with a bash script, where I’ve found it helpful to have compilation and sampling output go to a specified directory and have the option to run multiple chains on multiple cores.

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In the unlikely event that this is possible, it would be lovely if there was a way to run this in parallel over a specified number of cores.

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Neat! Are you going to open it as a PR in design docs?

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do you think it’s it ready as is?
happy to open PR and we can continue this discussion there.

regarding requires to running multiple chains, etc.

initial proposal was to create a minimal program which had a pretty much 1-1 mapping to functions in the services layer. however people want more from the command line interface - they pretty much want all the functionality cooked into the CmdStanX interfaces - (CmdStanPy and CmdStanR) - starting with a request to add a “compile” option. I think these are good and reasonable requests - the goal here is:

  • a clean interface between the services layer and this wrapper that makes it easy to add new services
  • an easy-to-use command line tool with a conventional syntax.
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Is there a possibility for config file so user don’t need to handle these “manually”?

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I understand the appeal of this, but it needs to be in line with stated goal 2 -