Setup PyMathProg¶

Setup Latest Version¶

Setting up the latest PyMathProg can’t be easier, just open a terminal and issue this command:

python -m pip install pymprog

That’s all you need to do and in just a few seconds you are all set! It already takes care of installing swiglpk to use GLPK within python. Note that on Windows you might need the privilage of an administrator to install it (start menu –> in the search box type in ‘cmd’ –> right click on the dos icon –> click ‘run as admininstrator’), and on Linux or Mac OSX, you may need to use sudo to acquire super user privilage to install something:

sudo python -m pip install pymprog

In case pip is not installed on your system, you may try this(use sudo if necessary, or on windows try to run as administrator):

python -m easy_install pip

It is the same simple way to setup PyMathProg on all operating systems (be it Mac OSX, Linux, or Windows) and for all recent Python 2 and 3 versions. Unless you are curious about other ways to setup PyMathProg, you can pretty much skip the rest of this document and proceed to the next chapter.

Alternative ways¶

You can also use PyMathProg by just putting the single pure python source file pymprog.py in the same folder as your python file that imports pymprog. Go to SourceForge PyMathProg Project and download the compressed source distribution file, then decompress it into your current folder. All the documentation files also come along with the python module file, ready for offline browsing.

Before you can use PyMathProg, however, you need to have swiglpk installed first:

pip install swiglpk>=1.3.3

On Linux or Mac OSX, you may need to use sudo. When the source file pymprog.py is available in your current working directory, you can enter an interactive session like this in a terminal:

python -i pymprog.py

This way a python session will start with pymprog fully imported, so that you can start modelling right away.

Finally, if you have all the sources decompressed into a folder, you may also install PyMathProg from that folder(which contains the file pymprog.py).

cd /path/to/decompressed/pymprog/
pip install .

On Linux or Mac OSX, you may need to use sudo. Without pip on your system, you may try this and see if you are lucky enough(it may not work sometimes):

cd /path/to/decompressed/pymprog/
python setup.py

Again, on Linux or Mac OSX, you may need to use sudo.

Setup OLD versions¶

Newer versions are much easier to setup, and more useful. Upgrading to the newest version is highly recomended. Setup instructions for new versions(>0.6.0) are provided in the beginning of this chapter.

If you insist on using old versions(<=0.6.0), or if you rather like the challenge involved, here are some instructions on how to setup your environment to run old versions of PyMathProg. Please choose your platform:

Setup on Windows.
Setup on Linux.
Setup on Mac OSX.

Setup on Windows¶

The easy way:¶

Setup Python 2.5.4.
Install GLPK: a setup program can be downloaded here and make sure your PATH enviroment variable contains the path to the glpk.dll file (by default in english language, it is in folder “C:\Program Files\GnuWin32\bin”).
Download dist#.#.zip (where #.# is the version) and unzip it, you will find two windows installer, and a zip file containing the source files. Run both installers. Unzip the source files and you can now play with the examples there.

The hard way:¶

If you would like to complile pyglpk yourself: Setup Python 2.5.x (2.6.x, 2.7.x also works) and MinGW 5.1.6 (MinGW has gcc compiler – the minimal installation should work. For more information, please refer to the appendix.
Install GLPK: a setup program can be downloaded here and when you install, make sure you install it in the “C:\Program Files\GnuWin32” folder. If you installed it somewhere else, you have to modify the ‘setup.py’ file to change the hardcoded installation directory of GLPK. For example, in the help forum of pymprog on sourceforge, Sano provided a way to install on Windows 64 bit, with some clever changes to the ‘setup.py’ file. Instead of:
```
libdirs = ['C:\\Program Files\\GnuWin32\\bin']
incdirs = ['C:\\Program Files\\GnuWin32\\include']
```
it needs to be:
```
libdirs = ['C:\\Program Files (x86)\\GnuWin32\\bin']
incdirs = ['C:\\Program Files (x86)\\GnuWin32\\include']
```
Make sure your %PATH% environment variable contains “C:\Python25;C:\MinGW\bin;C:\Program Files\GnuWin32\bin”, assuming you have installed them that way (the default).
Install PyGLPK (skip this step if pymprog version >= 0.3.0): unzip the source code of pyglpk (please goto the download section of pymprog project page at source forge – other sources might not compile on windows), go to the top folder that contains the setup.py file, issue this command:
```
python setup.py build --compiler=mingw32 install
```
to have it installed.
Also download the source code for pymprog, unzip it and open a command window (click Start->Run->type in ‘cmd’) and change to the unzipped folder, run:
```
python setup.py build --compiler=mingw32 install
```
Note: the compiler from the freely available Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition is not recommended.

If you would like to build a binary distribution, issue this command:
```
python setup.py build --compiler=mingw32 bdist_wininst
```
Then the distribution files (binary installers) are stored in the ‘dist’ folder

Setup on Linux¶

Setup Python 2.4 or later.
Install GLPK. For more information, visit GLPK homepage.
Install PyGLPK (skip this step if pymprog version >= 0.3.0): unzip the source code of pyglpk (please goto the download section of pymprog project page at source forge – other sources might not compile on windows), go to the top folder that contains the setup.py file, issue this command:
```
python setup.py install
```
to have it installed.
Also download the source code for pymprog, unzip it and start playing with the examples. If you wish, you can also install it, by running:
```
~/pymprog$ python setup.py install
```
once you have changed to the folder you have unzipped pymprog into.

Setup on Mac OSX¶

Setup Python 2.4 or later (Mac has that by default, so you should need to do nothing).
Setup glpk. Make sure you have the right version of xcode and MacPort for your version of Mac OSX (download the right dmg files, and follow the installation steps), then type this in a terminal:
```
sudo port install glpk
```
and that should install glpk onto your system.
Download pymprog0.3.1 or later, unzip and change to the base folder:
```
sudo python setup.py install
```
and that’s it.