ADMB/TMB Full Installation for Windows

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248-383-5611

Note: Mac installation of this software is much more involved – contact Charlie for instructions.

The project is maintained on Github.

Future updates to this document

Adding installation instructions for a TMB debugger
TMB instructions for VSCode

Overview

These procedures in the document install the following software and was tested on 5/22/23:

R 4.3.0
Rtools 43 (for the CPP compilers)
RStudio 2023.03.1 Build 446
TMB package for R 1.9.4
ADMB 13.1
Emacs 27.2 (Emacs version 28 does not work)
Emacs configuration files
- These files provide the syntax highlighting in Emacs for both ADMB and TMB and set up the Environment
admb2r.cpp in the ADMB folder

Appendix: Editing the PATH Environment

Admin access to your computer

The installation procedures will do the following that might require higher administrative access to your computer than your user account has:

Install programs (R, RStudio, Rtools, ADMB, Emacs)
Install programs directly to the C: drive (ADMB, RTools)
Install programs not validated by Microsoft (ADMB)
Run a batch file (PATH.bat)

Viewing hidden files and extensions in Windows (optional)

This section is useful for this installation and for any programming you do on your computer.

Note: images in this document can be resized by clicking on them

1) Open a File Explorer window and in...

Windows 10: Click View ➔ Options ➔ Change folder and search options

Accessing folder options in Windows 10

Windows 11: click 3 dots ( … ) ➔ Options

Accessing folder options in Windows 11

2) Both Windows 10 and 11:

- Click View tab
- Check Show hidden files…
- Uncheck Hide extensions for known file types
- click OK

Showing hidden files and hiding extensions

Software Installation

You can use the default installation options for all applications.

Steps 1, 3, and 4 are only needed for TMB, and Step 5 is only needed for ADMB. All other steps are required for both ADMB and TMB.

Download and Install R (you need to have at least version 4.3)
Download and install Rtools43 (you need to have at least version 43, which is the latest as of this writing)
- Click on Rrools43 Installer in Installing Rtools43 section
Download and install RStudio (you need to have a version from 2022 or later)
Open RStudio and install the TMB package
- In RStudio: Tools ➔ Install Packages… ➔ type TMB in Packages textbox ➔ Install
- Close RStudio after installing package
Download and install ADMB-13.1-windows.exe
- - Alternatively, you can download ADMB-12.3-windows.exe (under Windows header)
  - When installing, you will likely get a Windows protected your PC screen, if so:

- - 1. click More info
    2. click Run anyway

Download and install emacs-27.2-x86_64-installer.exe
Go to ADMB-TMB-Install GitHub page
- Click on green Code button and choose Download Zip
  - This will download a zipped file named ADMB-TMB-Install-main.zip
- Unzip ADMB-TMB-Install-main.zip (right-click, Extract All then Extract).
- Execute (double-click) Path.bat
  - You will likely get a Windows protected your PC screen, if so:

- 1. 1. 1. click More info
      2. click Run anyway
- If this does not work you can manually install the path files (this link also includes more about the files)

Restart computer
- As far as I know, this step is not needed -- but I keep it here just to be safe.

Have Emacs open TPL files by default (optional)

Right-click on any *.tpl file
- there is one in the folder you just extracted ➔ examples ➔ simple ➔ simple.tpl
Choose Open With
Windows 10:
- At bottom, click Choose an app on your PC
- The Path is: C:\Program Files\Emacs\x86_64\bin\runemacs.exe
- Click Open
- Click Always
Windows 11:
- go to bottom and click on Choose another
- At bottom, click Choose an app on your PC
- The Path is: C:\Program Files\Emacs\x86_64\bin\runemacs.exe
- Click OK

Note: the same procedures will work if you want emacs to be the default program for CPP files

Testing out ADMB

In folder you just unzipped, double-click emacs ➔ examples ➔ simple ➔ simple.tpl
Open simple.tpl in Emacs
Click Translate (button 1), Build (button 2), and Run (button 3)
- Make sure you wait for steps to complete
If the Emacs panels look like this after Run, then ADMB is properly installed:

Translate, Build, and Run buttons in ADMB. This view is from ADMB 12.3 -- the view from 13.1 is slightly different

Testing out TMB

In folder you just unzipped, double-click emacs ➔ examples ➔ mini ➔ mini.cpp
Open mini.cpp in Emacs

Click Clean (button 1), Compile (button 2), and Run (button 3)
- Make sure you wait for each step to complete
- Compile take a minute or two
If the Emacs panels look like this after Run, then TMB is properly installed:

Clean, Compile, and Run buttons in TMB

Package inconsistency error

If you see this message when compiling a TMB program:

Warning message:
In checkMatrixPackageVersion() : Package version inconsistency detected.
TMB was built with Matrix version 1.5.4.1
Current Matrix version is 1.5.4
Please re-install 'TMB' from source using install.packages('TMB', type = 'source') or ask CRAN for a binary version of 'TMB' matching CRAN's 'Matrix' package
using C++ compiler: 'G__~1.EXE (GCC) 12.2.0'

Do not follow the instructions given. Instead just update or reinstall the outdated package (in this case, Matrix). This is only necessary if the the script does not work because of the outdated package.

Appendix 1: User Environment PATH

The User Environment PATH variable is not needed anymore. I added this to the emacs configuration files.

However, there is still a chance that the User Environment PATH has been set by a previously installed program and that PATH could interfere with ADMB and TMB's operation. This is most likely only going to be true if you previously installed ADStudio.

You can see the User Environment PATH by doing a Windows search for Environment and choosing Edit the system environment variables.

That will open the System Properties window on the Advanced tab-- click on the Environment... button:

The Advanced System Properties tab

Then double-click on Path in the User variables section:

Path variables

Delete any references to older versions of ADMB, TMB, or ADStudio. You can also safely delete the references to the current ADMB version -- they are not needed.

Appendix 2: manually copy configuration files and admb2r.cpp

The extracted folder ADMB-TMB-Install-main contains:

- An executable file called PATH.bat (which installs the folders and files below)
- A folder called emacsConfigFiles that gets installed to the emacs folder when PATH.bat is executed
- A folder called Examples, which contains ADMB and TMB scripts that are used in this document to test the installation.
- admb2r.cpp -- a commonly used ADMB script file that is not included with ADMB

PATH.bat is a batch file that copies the emacs configuration files and admb2r.cpp to the correct locations.

The following are instructions to manually copy the files -- this is only needed if PATH.bat does not work.

Copy emacs configuration files

Inside ADMB-TMB-Install-main, there is a folder named emacsConfigFiles. You need to copy the contents inside the emacsConfigFiles folder (a file named .emacs and a folder named emacs) to the user’s appdata folder.

The easiest way to get to the user's appdata folder is to type %appdata% in a File Explorer window and hit enter. Or, you can go directly to the folder: C:\Users\<yourUserName>\AppData\Roaming. Move both the emacs folder and .emacs file to this folder:

Location to copy the emacs configuration files

Copy admb2r.cpp

The file admb2r.cpp is used in ADMB scripts but it does not come with ADMB.

You can add it to ADMB by copying admb2r.cpp from the ADMB-TMB-Install-main folder to the following locations:

c:\ADMB-13.1\include
c:\ADMB-13.1\include\contrib (I am not sure it is necessary to copy it here)

Note: If you are using a different version of ADMB then replace 13.1 with the version you are using