v0.1.5

StanBlocks v0.1.5

Diff since v0.1.4

Merged pull requests:

• improve README.md (#22) (@nsiccha)
• Fix issues 9 10 17 18 19 (#24) (@nsiccha)
• allow replacement of return value (#25) (@nsiccha)
• fix #26 (#27) (@nsiccha)
• Fix Can't "splice" parameters into a model which have not been define… (#28) (@nsiccha)
• fix #29 (#30) (@nsiccha)
• Add ordered and positive_ordered types (#32) (@nsiccha)
• Work on #10 (#33) (@nsiccha)
• Forgot *_infinity() rv (#34) (@nsiccha)
• Bring docs up to date (#36) (@nsiccha)
• Add golf and isba case studies (#37) (@nsiccha)
• add logit(...) tracetypes (#39) (@nsiccha)
• Start defining built-in binary vectorized function tracetypes (#46) (@nsiccha)
• Fix #45 (#47) (@nsiccha)
• update docs (#48) (@nsiccha)
• Bring dogs branch up to speed (#49) (@nsiccha)
• Update docs (#51) (@nsiccha)
• Simply Markdown Display (#54) (@nsiccha)
• advance compat (#55) (@nsiccha)

Closed issues:

• Can't infer shape of parameter from an int argument. (#9)
• Can't infer shapes from unnamed arguments for UDFs (#11)
• Can't post-hoc replace return value (#12)
• Can't "splice" parameters into a model which have not been defined in the model yet (#15)
• for loop bounds sometimes transpile weirdly (#17)
• _lcdf type methods don't print with Stan's |-syntax (#18)
• Submodel name mangling fails for some quantities (#19)
• Tests fail with tracetype(::StanBlocks.stan.CanonicalExpr{typeof(==)) [...] is ambiguous (#26)
• forward!(x::ReturnExpr; info) is too verbose (#29)
• maybe_lazy_size has an error (#45)

v0.1.4

StanBlocks v0.1.4

Diff since v0.1.3

• Expose stan_model
• Add some documentation
• Add simple_reduce_sum
• More tests
• Some quality of life improvements

Merged pull requests:

• Fixes some bugs, adds documentation, adds simple_reduce_sum. (#8) (@nsiccha)

v0.1.3

StanBlocks v0.1.3

Diff since v0.1.2

StanBlocks.jl (Stan backend)

Brings Julia syntax to Stan models by implementing a (limited) Julia to Stan transpilation with many caveats.
See test/slic.jl for implementations of a few simple posteriordb models
and see src/slic_stan/builtin.jl for a list of built-in functions and examples of user defined functions.

Current features include

• activity analysis (automatically determines what is data, transformed_data, parameters, transformed parameters, model, or generated quantities),
• automatically inferred types, shapes and constraints - including for user defined functions (including the function arguments, function body, and function return type),
• automatic posterior pointwise likelihood and predictive generation,
• (variadic) user defined functions,
• higher order (user defined) functions (such as map, broadcasted, sum and more),
• sub models,
• post-hoc model adjustment,
• named tuples,
• (approximate) automatic code formatting à la Blue,
• and more.

Upcoming features include, in order of priority and estimated arrival,

• custom types (for method dispatch),
• closures via Julia's Do-Block Syntax (to make within chain parallelization via reduce_sum less painful),
• a much better user experience,
• more and better tests,
• inlining (to reduce potential runtime overhead),
• array comprehensions,
• a more complete (and more correct) coverage of built-in Stan functions,
• better name resolution (currently user defined functions or sub models have to be defined in Main),
• and more.

Almost anything that's possible in Julia should be possible to be transpiled to Stan.
Of course, unless Stan is much faster than Julia (+Mooncake or Enzyme) for the model in question,
just sticking to Julia comes with many advantages.

Features which are NOT planned:

• (automatically) transpiling Julia functions which have not been defined via @deffun.

Merged pull requests:

• Add (Slic)Stan backend (#6) (@nsiccha)

v0.1.2

StanBlocks v0.1.2

Diff since v0.1.1

• Add normal_lpdf overload for scalar scale.
• Add DifferentiationInterface extension.

v0.1.1

StanBlocks v0.1.1

Closed issues:

• Benchmark results for Mooncake (#1)
• Question (#2)
• Rerun Benchmarks with Latest Mooncake Version (#3)
• Question about Stan syntax and math library coverage (#4)