Appfl

New Features

- Define server and client agents to act on behalf of the FL server and clients to conduct FL experiments.

- Simplify the configuration process for launching FL experiments by only providing a single YAML file for the server and a YAML file for each client.

- Rebuild the communicator module, supporting MPI, gRPC, and Globus Compute, to robustly exchange model parameters as well as task metadata between the server and clients in both synchronous and asynchronous FL experiment settings.

- Implement Globus-based authentication for secure distributed training with gRPC and Globus Compute - only members within the same specific Globus group can participate in the FL experiment.

- Integrate several lossy and error-bounded lossless compressors to the communicator module for efficient model compression.

Add documentation for the new version available at [appfl.ai](https://appfl.ai/)

Deprecated

The previous version of appfl is still seamlessly supported but deprecated and no longer maintained. Users are encouraged to upgrade to the new version for better performance, functionality, and extensibility.
Examples and tutorials for the previous version are still available in the `examples/examples_legacy` directory of the Github `appfl` repository.

What's Changed
* Data readiness report generation by kaveenh in https://github.com/APPFL/APPFL/pull/163
* Fix Issue 164 by Zilinghan in https://github.com/APPFL/APPFL/pull/165
* Make dr_metrics optional by Zilinghan in https://github.com/APPFL/APPFL/pull/168
* Major updates to docs by kibaekkim in https://github.com/APPFL/APPFL/pull/172
* Easy installation of SZ compressor using `appfl-install-compressor` by Zilinghan

New Contributors
* kaveenh made their first contribution in https://github.com/APPFL/APPFL/pull/163

**Full Changelog**: https://github.com/APPFL/APPFL/compare/v0.4.1...v0.4.2

What's Changed
- Integrate authenticators (`NaiveAuthenticator` and `GlobusAuthenticator`) for gRPC communication protocol for secure federation 162
- Add documentations for authentication designs
- Add documentations for asynchronous FL algorithms

**Full Changelog**: https://github.com/APPFL/APPFL/compare/v0.4.0...v0.4.1

What's Changed
- Add four variants of lossy compressors (SZ2, SZ3, SZx, ZFP) to improve FL communication efficiency 155 from grantwilkins
- Resolve file system race condition for globus compute 158 from yim0331
- Resolve `invalid load key` error for MPI communicator in https://github.com/APPFL/APPFL/commit/d5f2573beb86e816746b5180d1e692f90630335b by Zilinghan

Resolve a new bug `ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'appfl.comm.globus_compute.utils'`

What's Changed
In summary, this is a minor release mainly with the focus on resolving the problem that `appfl.comm` is not in the current released version, together with few other minor changes with details below

- Rename the package from Argonne Privacy-Preserving Federated Learning to **_Advanced_** Privacy-Preserving Federated Learning 154
- Resolve the device error when using DP on GPU 150
- Resolve `appfl.comm ModuleNotFoundError` 156