workflows

UNDER CONSTRUCTION!

MABE is a huge software package, and we found that different people at times use fairly different workflows. So here, we wanted to elaborate on their differences, and give you the opportunity to reflect on how you do things, how we intended to do things, and what you might want to do differently. It also gives us the opportunity to explain why certain things are the way the are.

Workflow 1: Out of the box

One of MABEs key features is, that you can use it right out of the box. If you follow the [quick start guide](Installation-and-getting-started-with-MABE) you end up with a fully functional version of MABE that contains pretty much all relevant features you might ever want to use. This MABE version can be entirely controlled by command-line parameters or config files. The idea is that this ready made package allows you to run not only a wide variety of experiments, it also allows you to customize them easily. Very often we find that we want to repeat an experiment, but want to use a different environment, different optimizers, or other brains. Doing this, just requires you do change a line or two in the config file, no coding required, and no recompilation. BTW. testing you hypotheses with different brains or optimizers or in different environments/worlds will make you results more robust. There is one tiny drawback, and that is the large size of config options you get when you create all config files. It gives you all the power, but the sheer number of options might intimidate you, that is why there is a build system which you will use for the second type of workflow.

Workflow 2: Building your custom MABE