AMPL MP Library Changelog#

unreleased#

  • Option cvt:pow2_as_qp prefers quadratization of the ^2 operator for affine arguments (default).

  • Faster parsing of quadratic expressions with defined variables.

20260515#

  • Fixed a bug in solve result name in the Multi-Objective Emulator.

  • Similar to inlining, nonlinear expressions with nontrivial external bounds are explicified into an auxiliary variable, depending on options cvt:pre:boundsbest and cvt:pre:boundlogarg.

  • Fixed a debugging feature on Windows.

  • Fixed a non-critical bug in the inlining of algebraic subexpressions resulting from redefinitions, option cvt:pre:unnest. In particular with cvt:pre:boundsbest=1, subexpressions with stronger result bounds are not inlined.

20260414#

  • Fixed a bug in the multi-objective emulator (see option obj:multi) when nonlinear terms were not reset for consecutive objectives.

  • Option cvt:pre:continuous_fixed_vars to declare fixed variables continuous. Default 1.

  • Option cvt:pre:boundsbest defaults to making auxiliary subexpression result variables free, unless the result is constant. This allows stronger nonlinear presolve.

  • Additional case where the signpow function is recognized: abs(C*x)*x (C constant, x variable).

  • Auxiliary variables and constraints receive names describing the redefinition path. Such names are only given if AMPL option (solver_)auxfiles rc is set, or solver option cvt:names=2,3 provided.

  • Added option tech:stats to return solution statistics via problem suffixes.

20260109#

  • Remove excessive ‘_’ symbols in output model constraint and variable names.

20251213#

  • Recognize the logistic function 1/(1+e^(-x)), option cvt:pre:logistic.

  • Recognize the signpow function sign(x)*x^k from several kinds of algebra, such as abs(x)*x^k. Option cvt:pre:signpow.

  • iis:find now the main name for option alg:iisfind (which is now a synonym).

  • Option obj:multi:options: fix integer-valued options.

20251121#

  • Meta-driver MP2NL, see https://mp.ampl.com/modeling-tools.html#mp2nl.

  • New option obj:multi:options to control whether multi-objective option suffixes are used.

  • Catch duplicate solver options.

20251021#

  • Option cvt:expr:nlassign adjusting expression inlining. Improves problem building performance for some nonlinear solvers on large models.

20251015#

  • Option cvt:pre:ctx2count is deprecated, with a new default value 7. Its former behavior is specialized and generalized by the new option cvt:pre:ctx2bndeq.

  • Option cvt:pre:ctx2bndeq controls whether conditional comparisons with upper/lower bounds are reformulated in exact context, vs. always mixed. Default yes, value 1.

  • Workaround for #270 (redefinition of an expression as an existing expression can lose connection to the original).

  • Fixed multiobj=2 for a single objective. Running multiobjective for a single-objective model makes sense with a negative .objweight suffix.

  • Options cvt:pre:ineq2bndeq, cvt:pre:ineq2related control unification of conditional equlaities and inequalities.

  • cvt:compl:eps=1e-9 new default.

  • alg:start=3 default (new value), which passes both the initial guesses and basis for LP (previously basis only).

  • Option cvt:uenc:negctx:max disregards lb(x), ub(x).

  • Options cvt:pre:ctx:abs etc. control propagation of expression context.

20250814#

  • Fixed reformulation of numberof and alldiff. Previously could produce an inefficient reformulation.

  • Option cvt:pre:sort:

    • Sorting and eliminating duplicates in arguments of AND, OR, MIN, MAX. This is necessary for some solvers.

    • Sorting arguments of COUNT, ATLEAST, EXACTLY, ATMOST, NUMBEROF, ALLDIFF.

  • Option cvt:pre:unnest extended for MIN, MAX (bit 8).

20250811#

  • The legacy fmt::MemoryWriter has double output precision of 17 significant digits (previously 6).

  • Option cvt:pre:boundlogarg (default 0) to bound arguments of logarithms nonnegative. Previously always done, sometimes deteriorating performance of nonlinear solvers.

20250801#

  • Tolerances set by options cvt:pre:feastol, cvt:pre:feastolrel both need to be violated to produce a warning on contradicting variable/constraint bounds. Previously the preprocessor failed on any violation, without letting the solver try.

  • Options cvt:compl, cvt:compl:eps control complementarity reformulations.

20250617#

  • Option cvt:unnest: bits 2 and 4 switch on inlining of linear and quadratic subexpressions produced during reformulations (by default on).

  • Options cvt:pre:ctx2ineq, cvt:pre:ctx2count to control context propagation into conditional comparisons #267.

20250616#

  • Multi-objective emulator: added support for objective-specific options via objective suffixes beginning with option_.

20250429#

  • Fixed a bug in parsing of quadratic expressions, which could wrongly parse products of unequal linear expressions, such as (x-3)*(x-z-5).

20250424#

  • Option alg:sens returns synonym suffixes .down/.up/.current for objective coefficients and .down/.up for right-hand sides.

  • Improved parsing speed of large sums of quadratic and polynomial expressions.

    • Setting option cvt:qp2passes=0 switches to a simpler method, usually slightly slower.

    • Option cvt:multoutcard to limit the size of out-multiplied QP expressions. Can improve speed on large models, but prone to numerical issues.

20250308#

  • Fixed a bug in monotonicity presolve which could have led to wrong models using a^x with a<1.

  • Reduced memory fragmentation for linear and quadratic expressions.

  • Option tech:outlev_mp=1 (implied by tech:outlev=1) prints initial and transformed model statistics.

  • Improved presolve for disequality: more cases when no logical disjunction is needed.

20250205#

  • Fixed a bug in model reformulations which could cause some constraints to be lost, see issue 248.

  • Option alg:sens=1 now returns suffix .sensobj with current objective coefficients in the solver model (this is the model corresponding to AMPL command solexpand.)

  • Option acc:_all is overridden by individual acceptance options, e.g., acc:or.

  • Substitute AMPL defined variables into linear, quadratic, and polynomial expressions (option cvt:dvelim). This can simplify quadratic and polynomial models (linear substitutions are already performed by AMPL, see AMPL options linelim and *substout.)

  • cvt:prod=7 default for LP and convex solvers, logicalizing also products of just 2 binary variables.

  • More presolve for logical expressions (Not, And, Or, Indicator), and new options to control some of them: cvt:pre:ineqresult, cvt:pre:ineqrhs.

  • Fix lower bound calculation of the division result.

  • [BREAKING] Option acc:pow now affects only expressions x^y with both x, y variable; previous meaning of acc:pow is now with acc:powconstexp.

  • Option tech:writemodel:index to choose the iteration when solver model is exported in the multi-objective emulator.

  • SCIP (and any solver with linear objective and non-linear constraints): improve reformulation of QP objectives.

  • Fix reformulation of non-linear objective expressions for the multi-objective case (option obj:multi) when negative objective weights are used (obj:multi:weight).

20240724#

  • Option acc:_all

    • Useful to disable all reformulations (acc:_all=2), or force linearization (acc:_all=0).

  • Faster input of quadratic expressions.

20240617#

  • Multi-objective emulator

    • obj:multi=2 forces emulation, even if MO natively supported.

      • Fixed a bug in the objective degradation suffixes .objabstol, .objreltol.

20240604#

  • Presolve division by constant, resulting in fewer constraints

  • Fix no-solution case in multi-objective emulator

20240529#

  • Multi-objective emulator

    • All flat MP solvers support multi-objective mode (obj:multi=1), either natively, or via emulation.

    • Suffixes .objpriority, .objweight, .objabstol, .objreltol.

    • [BREAKING] Default intuitive handling of .objweight, see option obj:multi:weight, even when natively supported.

20240429#

  • Options report_times and timing.

    • Options timing and report_times now have the same effect: setting their value to 1 returns basic timing information, setting it to 2 returns more granular info.

20240320#

  • SOS constraints.

    • Fixed handling of SOS2 constraints created by AMPL as reformulations of PL expressions (option pl_linearize 1, default; set to 0 to use the solver’s native PL functions if supported, or MP linearization.)

    • Disallow repeated weights for SOS constraints (suffixes .sosno/.ref).

  • Reformulation explorer.

    • Upgraded option writegraph exports the reformulation graph which can be explored with the script in support/modelexplore (WIP).

  • Native handling of POW(x, INT).

    • Power expressions with positive integer exponent are passed natively to the solvers accepting them, vs previously quadratic or linear reformulation.

    • For best performance, global solving capability might be needed (e.g., Gurobi: global=1.)

  • Option report_times.

  • Unused acc: options.

    • The constraint acceptance options acc:... for non-handled constraints are ignored (previously triggered error.)

  • NLWPY.

    • Python NL Writer API for MIQP models.

    • Available on PyPI.

20240115#

  • Solve result codes.

    • List codes by running (solver) -!

    • [BREAKING] Standardized codes. Major changes:

      • 100-199 (solved?) means solution candidate provided, but can be suboptimal/infeasible

      • 300-349 means unbounded problem but feasible solution returned

      • 400-449 means limit/interrupt but feasible

    • [BREAKING] sol:chk:fail returns code 150 (solved?)

  • Improved translation of SOCP constraints.

    • Options cvt:socp, cvt:socp2qc.

  • Compact solution check warnings

  • Fixed presolve of the power function #226.

  • Fixed graceful exit on Ctrl-C from AMPL in Linux.

20231103#

  • Improved translation of logical constraints: inlining of nested disjunctions and conjunctions; fewer auxiliary binary variables.

20231017#

  • Fixed a bug in NL reader on Windows.

20230919#

  • mp_options. Receive mp_options from AMPL (for all MP solvers). They are parsed before (solvername)_options.

  • Solution checking: relative tolerance sol:chk:feastolrel; options sol:chk:round, sol:chk:prec.

20230831#

  • Solution checking, options sol:chk:… (experimental).

  • Preprocess And/Or constraints.

20230817#

  • Alternative solutions: solve status equal to that of the final solution.

  • Fixed a bug causing repeated names for auxiliary variables and constraints.

  • Option values can be assigned without ‘=’.

  • Fixed a bug where equivalent conditional comparisons were not unified.

20230728#

  • Option ‘tech:writesolution’ #218.

  • Option ‘writeprob’ (‘tech:writemodel’) ASL-compatible.

  • Hint when ‘writeprob’ fails: use ‘writesol’.

20230726#

  • Fixed inequalities of integer expressions with non-integer constants, see test_int_non_int.mod.

  • Backend std feature WRITE_SOLUTION.

  • Fixed parsing quoted string options.

20230724#

  • Option [solver_]auxfiles rc; transfers names of variables and constraints into the model; (solver)_options ‘cvt:names=0-3’ controls names.

20230714#

  • Print warnings in non-verbose mode too.

  • ‘barrier’ equivalent to ‘barrier=1’ for integer options.

20230621#

  • Fix quadratic objective with repeated subexpressions.

20230616#

  • Smaller reformulations for conditional comparisons.

  • Option cvt:names sets whether to read AMPL variable names or to provide generic names.

20230531#

  • Cones: recognize (affine_expr) >= y * exp(z/y) as exponential cone.

  • Cones: recognize xy >= 1 as rotated SOC.

  • Wrong solver options are gracefully reported via solve_message.

20230515#

  • Recognize exponential conic constraints. Exponential cones are recognized and passed to the solver, if supported.

20230424#

  • Pass variable names if read from a col file with the same name of the nl file being read.

  • Fixed #203: starting solution is now not passed to the solver if empty.

20230321#

  • Recognize second-order cones Recognize SOCP constraints from algebra and pass them natively, or transform to quadratics.

20230207#

  • Handle boolean constants in ProblemFlattener.

20221228#

  • More to #163: ignore SOS with zero weights.

20221222#

  • Fixed #195: case-insensitive option synonyms.

  • Fixed #194 Report correct objno for feasibility problems in .sol file, so that AMPL can print “Objective = find feasible solution”.

20221211#

  • ==> else Implemented implication with ‘else’: constr1 ==> constr2 [else constr3]

  • PLApproxRelTol, PLApproxDomain Parameters to control piecewise-linear approximation. cvt:plapprox:reltol default value changed from 1e-5 to 0.01.

20221012#

  • Piecewise-linear approximation of quadratics Automatic for linear solvers. For convex QP solvers, set the following options: cvt:quadobj=0 cvt:quadcon=0 to linearize nonconvex objective(s) and/or constraints. Recognizing x^2 for stronger univariate approximation.

20220928#

  • Piecewise-linear approximation of univariate nonlinear functions Approximation of exp, a^x, x^a, log, log10, trigonometric and hyperbolic functions.

  • Default value of big-M For linearization of logical constraints on variables without finite bounds, option cvt:mip:bigM can provide a default big-M bound.

20220725#

  • Solution file export On Windows now creates files with LF only to avoid issues when exporting suffixes to AMPL.

    Multiple solutions export file format amended.

20220720#

  • Propagating suffixes via expression trees into flat constraints Partially implemented #184. x-gurobi accepts options ‘funcpieces…’ and corresponding suffixes which are passed into GRBaddgenconstrExp etc.

    Subexpressions: note that if a subexpression is contained in several constraints, for contradicting suffix values the maximum is taken.

  • Option ‘cvt:writegraph’ Exporting the flattening / conversion graph in JSON Lines format (WIP).

20220617#

  • PowConstraint is reduced to quadratics in some cases For constant non-negative integer exponent and base variables with negative lower bound, PowConstraint is reduced to quadratics (possibly with auxiliary variables). Reason: Gurobi’s GRBaddgenconstrPow not accepting negative bases.

  • Context for algebraic constraints Context is now propagated for algebraic constraints. For example, 3x + max(y, z) <= 6 will result in 3 linear constraints. (Earlier this was done for logical constraints and objectives).

20220526#

  • Special ordered sets Fixed: SOS are now recognized even if the suffix ‘.ref’ value is integer

20220511#

  • Complementarity constraints: also quadratics Complementarity constraints now handle quadratics.

  • Branch develop is used for new code The active development branch is now develop.

  • Convert quadratic range constraints to QuadCon(LE/EQ/GE) Gurobi and COPT do not support quadratic range constraints. (Gurobi’s linear ranges are not feature-complete). Conversion of linear range constraints into one-side rhs constraints has been generalized for any algebraic ones.

20220408#

  • Complementarity constraints: 1st go Conversion to MIP of complementarity constraints (no quadratics but functional subexpressions ok).

  • DivConstraint and DivConverter_MIP ModelFlattener now receives the Div expression and MIPFlatConverter handles it via quadratics.

  • Fix NL input variable order

  • Reduce default strict comparison tolerance Change cvt:mip:eps default value to 1e-4.

  • Build on MacOS 12.3, in particular on Apple M1 Fixed linking on MacOS 12.3 and FindCPLEX.cmake. For Apple M1, manually set -DCMAKE_OSX_ARCHITECTURES=”x86_64” in CMake when building with CPLEX 22.1 because it contains only Intel libraries.

  • Expression maps FlatConverter eliminates subexpressions of all types. A subexpression means here a duplicate expression, such as abs(x+2) occurring several times in the model (here x+2 is a nested subexpression).

  • AMPLS C API C API allowing access to underlying solver API. Replaces the previous Solver C API (solver-c.cc). Toy driver gurobi_ampls exemplifies API usage.

20220216#

  • Improved warnings (#161, #163): In verbose mode, FlatConverter / Backend print warning summary before and after solving

  • Fixed solver option parsing in Windows (#160)

  • Reworked Backend / ModelAPI class hierarchy (#162): In particular, also generalized old MP hierarchy (Solver / ProblemBuilder / AppSolutionHandler / SolverNLHandler)

  • Allowing SOS constraints with repeated weights (#163): Although Gurobi states SOS weights should be unique, it accepts them repeated. This happens when AMPL linearizes a PL function with redundant (repeated) slopes. It seems better to use PL functions natively (option pl_linearize 0;).