Awesome

This is a Docker image containing an installed version of the COIN-OR Optimization Suite.

Install and Use From Docker Hub

This image is now on Docker Hub. To use, simply install Docker (see instructions below) and then do

docker pull tkralphs/coinor-optimization-suite

This retrieves a docker image containing the COIN-OR Optimization Suite. Once you have the image, you can create a container, which is a running version of the image. Note that this container is completely isolated from the OS you are working in, so to run any useful commands inside it, you need to first copy the files in to the container, then copy the results back out. To do this, first create and start a container, as follows:

docker create --name=coin-or -it tkralphs/coinor-optimization-suite
docker start coin-or

Now copy in any files you need:

docker cp example.mps coin-or:/tmp

Here, we are copying into the /tmp directory inside the container. Finally, execute a solver command.

docker /var/coin-or/bin/cbc /tmp/example.mps > /tmp/output

and finally, copy the output back out

docker cp coin-or:/tmp/output .

Note that you are as root by default inside the container, but this is not much of a risk inside a docker container, since it can be recreated easily.

Build from Source

Linux

Just clone the repository and build the docker image by

git clone https://github.com/tkralphs/optimization-suite-docker
cd optimization-suite-docker
sudo docker build -t coin-or image/

Now follow the instructions for running a solver from above, but note that all commands will have to be executed with sudo.

Windows

First install Docker Desktop for Windows (in older versions of Windows without built-in virtualization, the instructions my be different). From a Powershell terminal, clone the repository and build the docker image by the commands

git clone https://github.com/PatWie/optimization-suite-docker
cd optimization-suite-docker
docker build -t coin-or image/

Finally, follow the instructions for running a solver from above.

Mac OSX

Since Docker is a bit more difficult to get running on OSX than on Linux, this is some additional documentation for the OSX crowd. OSX is not like Linux---virtualization is not built into the kernel. Therefore, we need to run the docker machine inside another VM. For this, we need virtualbox. The instructions below are for installing virutalbox with homebrew, which seems to work very well. (Caveat: I first found some old instructions on how to do this and took a round-about path to the installation. Therefore, the list of commands below is not exactly what I did. However, I think it's the right incantation if you're starting from scratch with an updated install of homebrew.)

Update: There now seems to be a trouble-free installation of Docker on OS X as a native app. I haven't tried this, but I guess it should work well and might be preferable is you are not already using homebrew.

First, install virtualbox

brew update
brew tap caskroom/cask
brew cask install virtualbox

Now install docker and docker-machine

brew install docker
brew install docker-machine

Create a new docker server to run in virtualbox and set environment variables so docker knows how to connect to it.

docker-machine create --driver virtualbox default
eval "$(docker-machine env default)"

Now follow instructions as above for building the container

git clone https://github.com/tkralphs/optimization-suite-docker
cd optimization-suite-docker/
docker build -t optimization-suite image/

Finally, start up the server and the container

docker-machine start default

Now follow the instructions for running a solver from above.