Clp (Coin-or linear programming) is an open-source linear programming solver. It is primarily meant to be used as a callable library, but a basic, stand-alone executable version is also available. It is designed to find solutions of mathematical optimization problems of the form

minimize c'x such that lhs ≤ Ax ≤ rhs and lb ≤ x ≤ ub

CLP includes primal and dual Simplex solvers. Both dual and primal algorithms can use matrix storage methods provided by the user (0-1 and network matrices are already supported in addition to the default sparse matrix). The dual algorithm has Dantzig and Steepest edge row pivot choices; new ones may be provided by the user. The same is true for the column pivot choice of the primal algorithm. The primal can also use a non linear cost which should work for piecewise linear convex functions. CLP also includes a barrier method for solving LPs.

Clp is written in C++ and is released as open source code under the Eclipse Public License (EPL). It is available from the COIN-OR initiative. The code is written primarily by John J. Forrest, now retired from IBM Research. The project is currently managed by John Forrest, Lou Hafer, Julian Hall, and Matthew Saltzman.

The Clp website is https://github.com/coin-or/Clp.

Binaries for most platforms are available for download from Bintray

• Linux: On Debian/Ubuntu, Cbc is available in the package coinor-clp and can be installed with apt. On Fedora, Cbc is available in the package coin-or-Clp.
• Windows: The easiest way to get Cbc on Windows is to download from Bintray, although an old interactive installer for the COIN-OR Optimization Suite is also still available.
• Mac OS X: The easiest way to get Cbc on Mac OS X is through Homebrew.
  • brew tap coin-or-tools/coinor
  • brew install clp
• AMPL also provides stand-alone Clp executables that can be used with (or without) AMPL.
• The GAMS distribution includes Clp.

Due to license incompatibilities, pre-compiled binaries lack some functionality. If binaries are not available for your platform for the latest version and you would like to request them to be built and posted, feel free to let us know on the mailing list.

Source code can be obtained either by

• Downloading a snapshot of the source code for the latest release version of Cbc from the Clp source code download page, or
• Checking out the code from Github or using the coinbrew script (recommended).

Below is a quick start guide for building on common platforms. More detailed build instructions are here (this is a work in progress).

To build Clp from source, obtain the coinbrew script from https://coin-or.github.io/coinbrew/ and run

/path/to/coinbrew fetch Clp
/path/to/coinbrew build Clp --prefix=/dir/to/install --test
/path/to/coinbrew install Clp

The coinbrew script will fetch these additional projects.

0. Install these Dependencies
1. Obtain the source code, e.g., from https://github.com/coin-or/Clp
2. Run ./configure -C to generate makefiles
3. Run make to build the CoinUtils library
4. Run make test to build and run the CoinUtils unit test program
5. Run make install to install library and header files.

For Microsoft Visual C++ users, there are project files for version 10 available in the MSVisualStudio directory. First, obtain the source code using either a Windows git client or download a snapshot. In MSVC++ Version 10, open the solution file (this should be converted to whatever version of MSVC+ you are using) and build the Clp project. The code should build out of the box with default settings.

It is also possible to build Clp with the Visual Studio compiler from the command line using the procedure for Unix-like environments, using the Msys2 shell or CYGWIN. This is the recommended and best-supported way of building Clp in Windows from source. To do so, make sure the cl compiler is in your path and add --enable-msvc to build command of coinbrew`.

If you have Doxygen available, you can build a HTML documentation by typing

make doxydoc

in the build directory. If Clp was build via coinbrew, then the build directory is ./build/Clp. The doxygen documentation main file is found at ./doxydoc/html/index.html in the build directory.

If Doxygen is not available, you can use also use this link.

Help:

• mailing list
• Report a bug

Documentation:

• Doxygen-generated html documentation
• Source code examples
• User's Guide (from 2004)

Interfaces:

• Matlab Interface + Windows x86 & x64 Interface Binaries (OPTI Toolbox)
• Julia interface
• R and CLP - a quick start
• Java and CLP - performs well