Release 2.7.0

[jonaballe]

Release 2.7.0 is the first release using a new automated build system, which streamlines the process of building pip packages.

As part of that, we are also synchronizing the versioning of TFC with TensorFlow, so that it is clearer which TF package needs to be installed (TFC version x.y.z now requires TF version x.y.*).

The main technical updates to this release include:

• Commit 61e7977 introduces a new, more general range coder op. This is now used throughout the library. The old ops are still contained in the library, so that older pre-trained models can be run, but all development going forward should use the new implementation.
• Commits edb8df5 and 49fe704 revise the handling of quantization offsets, and refactor the entropy model classes in the process. This removes quite a bit of complexity, and possibly solves improper handling of some edge cases.

This release requires TensorFlow 2.7.0 and TensorFlow Probability 0.15.

If you're on Linux or Darwin (Mac OS) and Python 3.7–3.9, install the pre-compiled binary by running:

pip install tensorflow-compression==2.7.0

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This discussion was created from the release Release 2.7.0.