watchmaker

A genetic algorithm implementation in Rust.

Features

• Developed as an investigation into capabilities and implementation characteristics
• Written in the Rust programming language
• The API aims to be minimal and complete
• Built-in crossover protection, to avoid the common bug where the first genome in a crossover operation is always used for the start of the resulting genome
• Some features are missing (see Roadmap section)

Usage

• Install Rust using rustup https://rustup.rs/
• Add a reference to your Cargo.toml file from: https://crates.io/crates/watchmaker
• Implement the Genetic trait for your search problem: rust pub trait Genetic<G> { fn initialize(&mut self) -> G; fn evaluate(&mut self, genome: &G) -> f64; fn crossover(&mut self, lhs: &G, rhs: &G) -> G; fn mutate(&mut self, original: &G) -> G; } Example: ```rust

type MyGenome = String;

pub struct MySearchProblem { random: Random, }

impl MySearchProblem { pub fn new(random: Random) -> Self { Self { random } } }

impl Genetic for MySearchProblem { fn initialize(&mut self) -> MyGenome { unimplemented!(); }

fn evaluate(&mut self, genome: &MyGenome) -> f64 {
    unimplemented!();
}

fn crossover(&mut self, lhs: &MyGenome, rhs: &MyGenome) -> MyGenome {
    unimplemented!();
}

fn mutate(&mut self, original: &MyGenome) -> MyGenome {
    unimplemented!();
}

} See `WSGenome` and `WSGenetic` for a fully implemented, working example that finds a target string. * Call the `solver` method: rust pub fn search( mut genetic: Box>, mut progress: Option>, mut random: Random, settings: &Settings, ) -> Result, Failure> Example: rust let result = solve( mut genetic: Box::new(MySearchProblem::new(makerandom())), mut progress: None, makerandom(), &Settings::default(), ); println!("{:?}", result); ```

Development

• Clone the repository (see below)
• Run cargo test or cargo build

Examples

See the examples folder.

Roadmap

Note major version increment with each major release. API changes will not be backwards compatible between major releases.

• [ ] v3.x.x

• Fourth published version

• Long Term Support

• Will take contributions, bug fixes from this point on.

• [ ] v2.x.x

• Third published version (beta quality)

• Multithreading
• Split out algorithm that produces new generations
• Better typing around Progress
• Simpler code example in README.md and crate documentation
• Link to examples, with description and sample output
• Update features section

• Unsupported

• [ ] v1.x.x

• Second published version (beta quality)

• Randomly swap genome to crossover, to prevent bias towards individual genome
• Builder pattern for search settings
• Rustdoc
• Fix license - does not appear as 'standard' on crates.io

• Unsupported

• [x] v0.1.0

• First published version (beta quality)

• Unsupported

Alternatives

• The Genetic Algorithm is a very well known technique: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_algorithm
• Rust Awesome has a list: https://github.com/awesome-rust-com/awesome-rust#genetic-algorithms
• Cargo: https://crates.io/search?q=genetic%20algorithm

Contributing

Not accepting pull requests yet :) See roadmap.

License

MIT permissive license. See LICENSE for full license details.

Source Code Repository

https://github.com/thomasbratt/watchmaker