tips/troubleshooting doc? FAQ list?

[bbolker]

As RTMB use increases it would be nice to have a somewhat curated list of tips/troubleshooting pointers/FAQs. At the moment I have a short list here. Happy to submit some version of this via PR if it seems like a good idea.

The alternative seems to be fishing around in the google group or the issues list ...

[kaskr]

Thanks @bbolker. A PR would be welcome.

[janoleko]

Great idea, I would definitely appreciate something like that!

I would also add the fact that you cannot initialize matrices (or arrays) using
A <- matrix(nrow = 1, ncol = 2) which is the same as A <- matrix(data = NA, nrow = 1, ncol = 2)
because RTMB does not like the NAs.

At least if that's still the case @kaskr

[bbolker]

For what it's worth there is a repo here with this information. I'd be happy to have it pulled into the main RTMB repo if that seems appropriate (i.e. I could submit a PR to migrate the information into this repo), or for suggestions for other venues.

While I'm making requests about docs: could there be a ChangeLog/NEWS file?

[kaskr]

Thanks, a PR would be nice. Where would you put it? A vignette?

[janoleko]

As a user who had some trouble finding all this stuff, I think a third Vignette with common issues would be great and very accessible.

[janoleko]

Btw, one of the tips is that exotic distributions need to be implemented yourself which (in many cases) is not necessary anymore because there is RTMBdist now :)