Repository files navigation

LensKit is a set of Python tools for experimenting with and studying recommendersystems. It provides support for training, running, and evaluating recommenderalgorithms in a flexible fashion suitable for research and education.

LensKit for Python (LKPY) is the successor to the Java-based LensKit project.

[!INFO]

LensKit had significant changes in the 2025.1 release. See theMigrationGuide for details.

To install the current release with Anaconda (recommended):

conda install -c conda-forge lenskit

If you use Pixi, you can add it to your project:

pixi add lenskit

Or you can usepip:

pip install lenskit

To use the latest development version, install directly from GitHub:

pip install -U git+https://github.com/lenskit/lkpy

Then seeGetting Started

To contribute to LensKit, clone or fork the repository, get to work, and submita pull request. We welcome contributions from anyone; if you are looking for aplace to get started, see theissue tracker.

Our development workflow is documented inthe wiki; the wiki alsocontains other information ondeveloping LensKit. User-facing documentation isathttps://lkpy.lenskit.org.

We recommend using Pixi for developing LensKit. Ourpixi.toml file containsthe development dependencies; to instal l dependencies for all of the LensKitpackages (on Linux or macOS), use thedev-full environment:

$pixi install -e dev-full

You can usepixi shell to open a shell within this environment:

$pixi shell -e dev-full

If you are on Windows, usedev-core instead ofdev-full; some LensKitpackages will be missing dependencies (specifically Implicit, HPF, and FunkSVD).

You should always test your changes by running the LensKit test suite:

python -m pytest

If you want to use your changes in a LensKit experiment, you can locally installyour modified LensKit into your experiment's environment. We recommend usingseparate environments for LensKit development and for each experiment; you willneed to install the modified LensKit into your experiment's repository:

conda activate my-expconda install -c conda-forgecd /path/to/lkpypip install -e . --no-deps

You may need to first uninstall LensKit from your experiment repo; make sure thatLensKit's dependencies are all still installed.

Once you have pushed your code to a GitHub branch, you can use a Git repository asa Pip dependency in anenvironment.yml for your experiment, to keep using thecorrect modified version of LensKit until your changes make it in to a release.

• Documentation
• Discussion and Announcements

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundationunder Grant No. IIS 17-51278. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions orrecommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do notnecessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.