minizinc for Mac

A high-level constraint modelling language that allows you to easily express and solve discrete optimisation problems.

Visit our website »

View Documentation · Report Bug · Request Feature

About the Project Getting Started Installation Usage Building Prerequisites Compilation Testing License Acknowledgements Contact

About The Project

MiniZinc is a free and open-source constraint modeling language.

You can use MiniZinc to model constraint satisfaction and optimisation problems in a high-level, solver-independent way, taking advantage of a large library of pre-defined constraints. Your model is then compiled into FlatZinc, a solver input language that is understood by a wide range of solvers.

MiniZinc is developed at Monash University with support from OPTIMA.

Getting Started

To get a MiniZinc up and running follow these simple steps.

Installation

The recommended way to install _MiniZinc_ is by the use of the bundled binary packages. These packages are available for machines running Linux, Mac, and Windows.

The latest release can be found on the MiniZinc website.

Usage

Once the MiniZinc bundle is installed on your machine, you can start expressing and solving discrete optimisation problems. The following code segment shows a MiniZinc model for the well known n-queens problem.

You have two easy options to solve this model: In the MiniZincIDE: Select your preferred solver and press the "Run" button. With the minizinc executable available on your path: run minizinc --solver gecode nqueens.mzn.

_For more example MiniZinc models and more information about working with MiniZinc, please refer to our Documentation_

Building

The following instructions will help you compile the MiniZinc compiler. Note that this repository does not include the IDE, findMUS, or any solvers that are part of the MiniZinc project. These can be found in the following repositories: MiniZincIDE Gecode Chuffed

Prerequisites CMake (>=3.4) A recent C++ compiler - Compilation is tested with recent versions of Clang, GCC, and Microsoft Visual C++. (optional) Bison (>=3.4) and Flex (>=2.5) - To make changes to the MiniZinc lexer or parser. (optional) Gecode - To compile the internal Gecode solver interface (included in the MiniZinc bundle) (optional) Coin OR's CBC - To compile the internal CBC solver interface (included in the MiniZinc bundle) (optional) Proprietary solver headers (CPLEX, Gurobi, SCIP, Xpress) - To load these solvers at runtime (included in the MiniZinc bundle)

Compilation

The MiniZinc compiler is compiled as a CMake project. CMake's User Interaction Guide can provide you with a quick introduction to compiling CMake projects. The following CMake variables can be used in the MiniZinc project to instruct the compilation behaviour:

Possible values for ** are CPlex, Geas, Gecode, and OsiCBC.

Testing