simple-annealing 0.1.0__tar.gz

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+ push:
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+ runs-on: ubuntu-latest
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+ matrix:
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+ # The floor is 3.10 (PEP 604 unions in annotations at runtime); the
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+ # ceiling is whatever's current — there's nothing version-specific here,
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+ # so a break on a new release is a break worth seeing.
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+ python-version: ["3.10", "3.11", "3.12", "3.13"]
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+ - uses: actions/checkout@v4
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+ - uses: actions/setup-python@v5
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+ with:
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+ python-version: ${{ matrix.python-version }}
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+ - run: pip install -e ".[dev]"
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+ - run: pytest -q
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+ - run: ruff check .
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+ - run: mypy --strict src/simple_annealing
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+ # Changelog
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+
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+ ## 0.1.0 — unreleased
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+
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+ First release.
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+
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+ - `anneal()` — simulated annealing over any state type, with `energy` and `move`
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+ as plain functions rather than an inherited base class.
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+ - Private seeded RNG. The process-global `random` module is never read or
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+ written, so concurrent runs stay independent and reproducible.
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+ - No signal handlers and no stream output, so a run is safe in a worker thread
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+ and silent unless you pass `on_progress`.
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+ - Stopping conditions: `max_steps`, `time_budget`, `target_energy`,
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+ `stall_steps`. At least one budget is required — there is no default.
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+ - `move()` may return `(state, delta)` to skip the energy call. The winner's
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+ energy is recomputed at the end and any disagreement surfaces as
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+ `result.delta_drift`.
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+ - `copy=` for in-place moves, invoked once per improvement rather than per step.
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+ - Schedules: `geometric`, `linear`, `constant`, or any
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+ `Callable[[float], float]`.
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+ - `calibrate()` sizes `t_max`/`t_min` from a sample of the actual landscape;
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+ used automatically when no `schedule` is given.
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+ MIT License
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+
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+ Copyright (c) 2026 k3
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+
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+ Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
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+ of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
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+ in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
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+ to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
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+ copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
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+ furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
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+
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+ The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
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+ copies or substantial portions of the Software.
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+
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+ THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
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+ IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
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+ FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
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+ AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
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+ LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
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+ OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
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+ SOFTWARE.
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+ Metadata-Version: 2.5
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+ Name: simple-annealing
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+ Version: 0.1.0
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+ Summary: Simulated annealing that is safe to run inside a server: deterministic, deadline-bounded, thread-safe, silent.
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+ Project-URL: Homepage, https://github.com/buoren/simple-annealing
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+ Project-URL: Issues, https://github.com/buoren/simple-annealing/issues
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+ Author-email: k3 <buoren@vaguely.nl>
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+ License: MIT License
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+
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+ Copyright (c) 2026 k3
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+
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+ Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
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+ of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
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+ in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
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+ to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
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+ copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
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+ furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
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+
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+ The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
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+ copies or substantial portions of the Software.
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+
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+ THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
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+ IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
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+ FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
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+ AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
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+ LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
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+ OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
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+ SOFTWARE.
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+ License-File: LICENSE
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+ Keywords: combinatorial-optimization,metaheuristic,optimization,scheduling,simulated-annealing
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+ Classifier: Development Status :: 4 - Beta
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+ Classifier: Intended Audience :: Developers
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+ Classifier: Intended Audience :: Science/Research
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+ Classifier: License :: OSI Approved :: MIT License
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+ Classifier: Operating System :: OS Independent
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+ Classifier: Programming Language :: Python :: 3
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+ Classifier: Programming Language :: Python :: 3.10
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+ Classifier: Programming Language :: Python :: 3.11
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+ Classifier: Programming Language :: Python :: 3.12
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+ Classifier: Programming Language :: Python :: 3.13
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+ Classifier: Topic :: Scientific/Engineering :: Mathematics
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+ Classifier: Typing :: Typed
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+ Requires-Python: >=3.10
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+ Provides-Extra: dev
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+ Requires-Dist: mypy>=1.8; extra == 'dev'
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+ Requires-Dist: pytest>=8.0; extra == 'dev'
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+ Requires-Dist: ruff<0.15,>=0.14; extra == 'dev'
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+ Description-Content-Type: text/markdown
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+
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+ # simple-annealing
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+
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+ Simulated annealing that is safe to run **inside a server**.
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+
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+ Deterministic when you ask for it, bounded by a deadline when you need one, silent
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+ by default, and free of global state — so several optimisations can share a
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+ process without interfering with each other or with you.
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+
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+ Pure Python, no dependencies, one function.
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+
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+ ```sh
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+ pip install simple-annealing
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+ ```
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+
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+ ---
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+
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+ ## What it's for
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+
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+ Simulated annealing finds a good arrangement of things when there are too many
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+ arrangements to try: routes, rosters, seating plans, timetables, packings. You
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+ give it a way to score an arrangement and a way to nudge one into a neighbouring
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+ arrangement, and it wanders the space — accepting the occasional worse
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+ arrangement early on so it doesn't get stuck in the first decent one it finds, and
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+ growing fussier as it goes.
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+
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+ **Reach for it when** the state is discrete and combinatorial, "good enough,
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+ quickly" beats "provably optimal, eventually", and you can score an arrangement
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+ cheaply.
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+
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+ **Don't** when you're optimising a smooth function of real numbers (use SciPy),
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+ when your problem is small enough to solve exactly (use a real solver), or when
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+ you're tuning hyperparameters (use Optuna). More on all three [below](#what-to-use-instead).
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+
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+ The algorithm itself is short — nobody needs a library for the loop. What's worth
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+ packaging is the handful of decisions that go wrong when you run one as part of a
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+ **live system** rather than in a script. That's what this is.
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+
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+ ---
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+
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+ ## How to use it
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+
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+ Two functions and a budget:
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+
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+ ```python
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+ from simple_annealing import anneal
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+
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+ def energy(route): # lower is better
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+ return sum(distance(a, b) for a, b in zip(route, route[1:]))
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+
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+ def move(route, rng): # one small random change
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+ i, j = rng.randrange(len(route)), rng.randrange(len(route))
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+ nudged = list(route)
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+ nudged[i], nudged[j] = nudged[j], nudged[i]
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+ return tuple(nudged)
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+
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+ result = anneal(
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+ initial_route,
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+ energy=energy,
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+ move=move,
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+ seed=1234,
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+ max_steps=50_000,
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+ )
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+
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+ result.state # the best arrangement found — never merely the last one tried
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+ result.energy # its score, recomputed from scratch rather than accumulated
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+ result.improvement # how much better than where you started
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+ result.stopped_by # "max_steps" | "time_budget" | "stall" | "target_energy"
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+ ```
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+
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+ That's the whole surface. The rest of this section is the detail behind those five
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+ arguments.
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+
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+ ### `energy(state) -> float`
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+
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+ Your objective. Lower is better; the units are yours. It's called once per step
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+ unless your `move` returns deltas (see below), so if it's expensive, that's the
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+ first thing to look at.
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+
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+ ### `move(state, rng) -> state`
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+
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+ Returns a *neighbouring* arrangement. Two rules:
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+
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+ 1. **Draw all randomness from the `rng` you're handed**, never from the global
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+ `random` module — otherwise the run stops being reproducible.
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+ 2. **Return a new state.** Nothing is copied if you do, which is what keeps the
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+ loop cheap. If you'd rather mutate in place, return the same object and pass
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+ `copy=` — that gets called once per improvement, not once per step.
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+
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+ ### Budgets
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+
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+ At least one of `max_steps` or `time_budget` is required. There's no default,
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+ because a search with no stopping condition is a hang, and a silent default step
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+ count is a hang waiting for a slow objective. See
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+ [choosing a budget](#choosing-a-budget) for which to pick.
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+
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+ You can also pass `target_energy` (stop once the answer is good enough — for
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+ problems with a known floor, like "zero conflicts", this can end a run in
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+ milliseconds) and `stall_steps` (give up after N steps with no improvement).
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+
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+ ### Reporting
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+
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+ The library never writes to a stream. Pass `on_progress` to receive an immutable
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+ `Progress` record every `progress_every` steps and route it wherever you like:
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+
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+ ```python
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+ anneal(..., on_progress=lambda p: log.info("step %d best %.2f", p.step, p.best_energy),
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+ progress_every=10_000)
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+ ```
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+
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+ ### Bringing a class
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+
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+ There's no base class to inherit, but bound methods are functions, so modelling
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+ the problem as a class works with no support from the library:
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+
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+ ```python
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+ class TourProblem:
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+ def __init__(self, cities):
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+ self.cities = cities # shared by both methods
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+
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+ def energy(self, route): ...
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+ def move(self, route, rng): ...
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+
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+ problem = TourProblem(cities)
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+ result = anneal(start, energy=problem.energy, move=problem.move, seed=1, max_steps=50_000)
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+ ```
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+
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+ You keep the class and the shared data; you just don't inherit a constructor and a
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+ state contract. See [why it's this way round](#8-functions-not-inheritance--but-classes-still-work).
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+
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+ ---
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+
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+ ## Writing a good `move()`
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+
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+ This matters more than any parameter here. A tuned schedule with a poor move
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+ function loses to a default schedule with a good one, every time.
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+
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+ **Small.** A move should reach a *neighbour*, not a stranger. If a move changes
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+ half the state, its energy is uncorrelated with the current one and you're doing
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+ random sampling with extra steps.
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+
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+ **Reachable.** Every arrangement you'd accept as an answer must be reachable from
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+ the start by some chain of moves. If your moves only ever swap adjacent items,
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+ whole regions of the space are unreachable and the search can't find what's in
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+ them.
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+
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+ **Roughly reversible.** If a move can be undone by another equally likely move, the
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+ maths behind the acceptance rule holds. Strongly one-way moves bias the walk.
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+
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+ **Structure-aware beats generic.** The classic illustration is the travelling
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+ salesman: swapping two cities is a legal move, but reversing a *segment* (2-opt)
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+ is dramatically better, because a long tour's real problem is crossings and
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+ reversing a segment is exactly what uncrosses them. Both examples in `examples/`
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+ use 2-opt for that reason.
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+
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+ **Cheap.** It runs hundreds of thousands of times.
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+
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+ If a run disappoints, suspect the move function before the temperature. A quick
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+ diagnostic: run with `schedule=constant(0)`, which accepts only improvements. If
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+ that hill-climb gets nearly as far as annealing did, your moves aren't opening up
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+ the space and no schedule will fix it.
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+
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+ ---
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+
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+ ## Choosing a budget
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+
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+ The one real trade-off in the library, stated plainly.
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+
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+ | | `max_steps` | `time_budget` |
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+ |---|---|---|
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+ | Bounds | work | latency |
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+ | Same seed, same answer? | **Yes**, on any machine, under any load | No |
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+ | Use when | you need reproducibility, or you're testing | you have a deadline to hit |
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+
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+ Both can be set: the run stops at whichever comes first, cooling is driven by
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+ whichever is running out faster — so a run cut short by the clock still finishes
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+ cold rather than mid-wander — and `result.stopped_by` tells you which one fired.
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+
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+ That last field is worth logging. A deployment that has quietly got slower shows
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+ up as a shift from `max_steps` to `time_budget` in your metrics, rather than as
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+ silence.
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+
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+ The difference is real and easy to see for yourself. From `examples/server.py`, 20
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+ concurrent requests with the same seed:
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+
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+ ```
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+ step-bounded distinct routes: 1 stopped_by: max_steps
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+ deadline-bounded distinct routes: 19 stopped_by: time_budget
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+ ```
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+
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+ Nothing is wrong in the second row: twenty runs contending for the same cores each
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+ fit a different number of steps into the deadline, so each explores a different
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+ amount. A wall-clock bound buys promptness with exactly that reproducibility.
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+
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+ ---
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+
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+ ## Why this one?
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+
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+ ### 1. It can run in a worker thread
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+
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+ Web frameworks serve synchronous handlers from a threadpool. An optimiser that
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+ registers a `SIGINT` handler in its constructor cannot be constructed there at all
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+ — `signal.signal` raises `ValueError: signal only works in main thread of the main
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+ interpreter` — leaving you to run a CPU-bound loop on the event loop and block
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+ every other request.
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+
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+ This library installs no signal handlers and touches no interpreter-global state.
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+ A test asserts `SIGINT`'s handler is untouched; another runs eight optimisations
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+ concurrently across a threadpool.
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+
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+ ### 2. Determinism that survives concurrency
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+
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+ The usual way to get a reproducible run is `random.seed(n)` — process-global. Two
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+ requests annealing at once then interleave draws from the same generator, so
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+ neither is reproducible, and seeding stamps on every other consumer of `random` in
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+ the process.
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+
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+ Here, `seed=` creates a private `random.Random`. Same seed and same step budget
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+ give an identical answer whether the run is alone or one of twenty; the global
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+ generator is provably untouched.
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+
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+ This matters beyond testing. People stop trusting a button that answers
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+ differently each time they press it, even when every answer is good.
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+
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+ ### 3. Deadlines, not just step counts
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+
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+ See [choosing a budget](#choosing-a-budget). A run with no stopping condition at
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+ all raises rather than defaulting.
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+
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+ ### 4. It never prints
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+
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+ Nothing goes to stdout or stderr. Progress goes to a callback, or nowhere.
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+ Asserted by a test.
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+
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+ ### 5. Copies scale with improvements, not with steps
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+
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+ The conventional design mutates state in place and copies it constantly to track
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+ current, previous and best — hundreds of thousands of copies in a 50,000-step run.
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+
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+ Here `move()` returns the next state, so nothing is copied at all. Prefer to
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+ mutate? Pass `copy=`; it runs only when a new best is found, so copying costs
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+ O(improvements) — typically a few dozen — instead of O(steps).
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+
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+ ### 6. Deltas, with the usual footgun defused
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+
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+ An expensive objective makes full recomputation the bottleneck, so `move()` may
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+ return `(next_state, delta)` and skip the `energy()` call entirely.
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+
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+ The trap is that a *wrong* delta is silent: the run diligently optimises a running
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+ total that has drifted from the real objective, and reports a confident,
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+ meaningless number. This library recomputes the winner's energy once at the end,
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+ reports that as the truth, and exposes the discrepancy as `result.delta_drift`.
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+ Non-zero means your delta and your energy disagree.
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+
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+ ### 7. Temperatures sized from your problem
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+
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+ `t_max` and `t_min` are in the units of *your* energy function, so a library
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+ default is meaningless — 25,000 is scorching for a problem scored in fractions and
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+ freezing for one scored in thousands. Omit `schedule` and the annealer takes a
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+ short random walk first, measures the uphill moves it actually meets, and picks a
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+ range accepting a typical one 80% of the time at the start and the smallest one 1%
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+ of the time at the end. Tens of moves; bypass it with an explicit `schedule=`.
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+
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+ ### 8. Functions, not inheritance — but classes still work
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+
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+ There's no base class to subclass and no framework object holding your state.
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+
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+ That isn't austerity; it's what makes point 5 possible. A base class has to own the
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+ state as `self.state`, and *that* is what forces an annealer to copy on every step
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+ to track current, previous and best. Make state a value that moves return, and
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+ there's nothing to copy.
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+
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+ If you like modelling the problem as a class, [do](#bringing-a-class) — bound
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+ methods are functions. The functional API subsumes the class-based one; the
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+ reverse isn't true.
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+
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+ ---
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+
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+ ## What to use instead
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+
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+ This library is narrow on purpose.
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+
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+ | If you're… | Use |
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+ |---|---|
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+ | Optimising a continuous function over ℝⁿ | **`scipy.optimize.dual_annealing`** or `basinhopping`. Mature, well-tested, built for real-valued vectors. This library targets combinatorial state — permutations, assignments, schedules — where "the gradient" isn't a thing |
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+ | Annealing in a script or notebook: main thread, no deadline, progress on screen | **[`simanneal`](https://github.com/perrygeo/simanneal)** is a fine, long-standing choice with a progress display built in. Its constraints — a global RNG, a `SIGINT` handler installed at construction, step-count budgets, stderr output — are reasonable for interactive use, and are exactly what this library exists to avoid elsewhere |
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+ | Needing a proven-optimal answer, not a good one | **OR-Tools CP-SAT**. Annealing offers no optimality guarantee. If your problem is small enough to solve exactly, solve it exactly |
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+ | Tuning hyperparameters | **Optuna** or **Hyperopt**. Different problem, better tools |
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+ | Running one long optimisation offline | Almost anything works, including this. The properties above stop mattering when nothing else shares the process |
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+
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+ ---
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+
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+ ## API
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+
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+ ### `anneal(initial, *, energy, move, ...) -> Result`
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+
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+ | Argument | Meaning |
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+ |---|---|
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+ | `initial` | Any object. The annealer never inspects it |
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+ | `energy` | `state -> float`, lower is better |
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+ | `move` | `(state, rng) -> next_state` or `-> (next_state, delta)` |
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+ | `max_steps` | Stop after N steps. Reproducible |
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+ | `time_budget` | Stop after N seconds. At least one budget is required |
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+ | `seed` / `rng` | A private generator. Never the global one |
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+ | `schedule` | `progress(0..1) -> temperature`. Defaults to a calibrated geometric schedule |
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+ | `stall_steps` | Give up after N steps with no new best |
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+ | `target_energy` | Stop once this is reached |
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+ | `copy` | Only for in-place moves. Called per improvement |
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+ | `on_progress` / `progress_every` | Reporting hook and its cadence |
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+ | `calibration_samples` | Moves sampled to size the default schedule |
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+ | `clock` | Injectable time source, so deadlines are testable |
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+
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+ ### `Result` (frozen)
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+
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+ `state`, `energy`, `initial_energy`, `improvement`, `steps`, `accepted`,
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+ `improved`, `elapsed`, `stopped_by`, `delta_drift`.
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+
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+ ### `Progress` (frozen)
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+
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+ `step`, `energy`, `best_energy`, `temperature`, `accepted`, `elapsed`, `fraction`.
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+
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+ ### Schedules
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+
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+ `geometric(t_max, t_min)` (the usual choice), `linear(t_max, t_min=0)`,
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+ `constant(t)` (Metropolis without annealing — useful for telling whether a
374
+ disappointing run is the schedule's fault or the move function's). A schedule is
375
+ just `Callable[[float], float]`, so your own works anywhere one is accepted.
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+ `acceptance_probability(delta, temperature)` is exposed for the same reason.
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+
378
+ ### `calibrate(initial, *, energy, move, rng, ...) -> (t_max, t_min)`
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+
380
+ Exposed separately so you can size a range once and reuse it across many runs
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+ rather than paying for the sampling walk each time.
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+
383
+ ---
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+
385
+ ## Examples
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+
387
+ | | |
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+ |---|---|
389
+ | `examples/tsp.py` | A 20-city tour, 2-opt moves, progress through a callback. ~500k steps in 2s, 246 → 121 |
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+ | `examples/server.py` | The case this library exists for: annealing in a request handler, stdlib only. Demonstrates both budget modes under concurrency |
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+
392
+ ---
393
+
394
+ ## Development
395
+
396
+ ```sh
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+ pip install -e ".[dev]"
398
+ pytest
399
+ ruff check .
400
+ mypy --strict src/simple_annealing
401
+ ```
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+
403
+ Python 3.10+. No runtime dependencies.
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+
405
+ ## Licence
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+
407
+ MIT.