liquidSVM for Python
====================

Welcome to the Python bindings for liquidSVM.

Summary:

-   If you want to compile liquidSVM for your machine download
    http://www.isa.uni-stuttgart.de/software/python/liquidSVM-python.tar.gz.
    For Windows there are binaries at liquidSVM-python.win-amd64.zip,
    for Mac at liquidSVM-python.macosx.tar.gz
-   Install it using any of the following variants:

        easy_install --user --upgrade http://www.isa.uni-stuttgart.de/software/python/liquidSVM-python.tar.gz
        pip install --user --upgrade http://www.isa.uni-stuttgart.de/software/python/liquidSVM-python.tar.gz

Then to try it out issue on the command line

    python -m liquidSVM

  NOTE: it might be possible that there is a problem with the last line
  if there are files called liquidSVM* in the current directory, so
  change to some other or a newly created one.

``` {.python}
from liquidSVM import *
model = mcSVM(iris, iris_labs, display=1,threads=2)
result, err = model.test(iris, iris_labs)
result = model.predict(iris)
```

Both liquidSVM and these bindings are provided under the AGPL 3.0
license.

Native Library Compilation
--------------------------

liquidSVM is implemented in C++ therefore a native library needs to be
compiled and included in the Python process. Binaries for Windows are
included, however if it is possible for you, we recommend you compile it
for every machine to get full performance.

To set compiler options use the the environment variable
LIQUIDSVM_CONFIGURE_ARGS. The first word in it can be any of the
following:

native
    usually the fastest, but the resulting library is usually not
    portable to other machines.
generic
    should be portable to most machines, yet slower (factor 2 to 4?)
debug
    compiles with debugging activated (can be debugged e.g. with gdb)
empty
    No special compilation options activated.

The remainder of the environment variable will be passed to the
compiler. Extract
http://www.isa.uni-stuttgart.de/software/python/liquidSVM-python.tar.gz
and change into the directory. On Linux and MacOS X command line use for
instance:

    LIQUIDSVM_CONFIGURE_ARGS="native -mavx2" python setup.py bdist
    LIQUIDSVM_CONFIGURE_ARGS=generic python setup.py bdist

MacOS:
    Install Xcode and then the optional command line tools are installed
    from therein.

Windows:
    If you have VisualStudio installed then you should have an
    environment variable like %VS90COMNTOOLS% (for VisualStudio 2015).
    Still it seems that setup.py needs to have this information in
    %VS90COMNTOOLS% so copy that environment variable or use for
    example:

        set VS90COMNTOOLS=%VS140COMNTOOLS%

      Note: At the moment the Visual Studio for Python only gives
      Version 9.0 and this is too old for compilation.


