Investigate replacing Lightsnip with bonsai
In 2022, both the residential and condo models used a custom shim R package to bridge the gap between LightGBM and Tidymodels. This package is called Lightsnip. It has a variety of extra features and improvements that were not included in the previous shim package (treesnip).
Since last year's model, Tidymodels has released an officially supported parsnip shim for LightGBM, called bonsai. We should investigate whether or not bonsai can reasonably replace Lightsnip.
Some reasons to replace include:
- Official support from Tidymodels maintainers, rather than a one-off package
- Better integration with parsnip and its features
Some reasons not to replace include:
- Missing critical and useful features from Lightsnip, such as parameter linking and early stopping
- Not as flexible to the specific needs of the CCAO