[Clp] Is the project still maintained?

[Julian Hall]

Dear Dimitris

Clp is certainly actively supported and is used so much that you can  
be confident that it will be around for a long time to come. Its  
author [John Forrest] continues to fix bugs in it---not that they come  
up very often---and other people in the COIN-OR community help to keep  
related interface software up-to-date.

However, for various reasons, I can't see much scope for bringing  
documentation up-to-date or developing it further. Although I'm  
Project Manager, I'm in no position to develop John's code, and I  
don't think anyone else is, or is likely to. My assessment of it is  
that it's pretty good as a revised simplex solver and to improve it  
significantly would require a lot of work and probably a major  
re-write. Who might have the time to do this, I cannot imagine.

There's still a lot that can be learned from it: Miles Lubin  
incorporated some utilities into the work I did with him, and my  
recent PhD [Qi Huangfu] also studied it. Indeed, if you're looking for  
"a nice linear programming library with a nice c++ API" then maybe  
it's time that I made Qi's simplex solver available: it's very concise  
and its performance is comparable with that of Clp. This has been on  
my "to do" list since Qi finished a year ago so it isn't going to  
happen before the summer---which in Scotland might mean never!

I'd advise you to use Clp and post any queries to  
clp at list.coin-or.org. There are great folk on this list who seem happy  
to give advice that I can't.

All the best,

Julian

> I'm looking for a nice linear programming library with a nice c++ API
> (preferably not old-fashioned c-like).
> Although my current problem is small and simple, it would be nice to gain
> familiarity with a library that has a sustainable future.
> I'm looking into coin's Clp, but I'm a bit confused regarding the status of
> the project.
> Most pages seem to be very old, while some examples were uploaded only 12
> months ago.
> Could you please comment on the project's status?
> Is it actively maintained?
>
> Best,
> dimitris
>



Julian Hall (Operational Research MSc Programme Director)
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