spopt as solver agnostic?

[jGaboardi]

The current implementation of BaseSpOptExactSolver sets the solver to the ortools wrapper for CBC: pywraplp.Solver. In order to make spopt child model classes solver agnostic should we remove the declaration of self.spOptSolver here and have self.solve as an @abstractmethod like in BaseSpOptHeuristicSolver?

Related: #18

[jGaboardi]

or maybe have a parameter for solver in BaseSpOptExactSolver? For example, with mip

import mip

class BaseSpOptExactSolver(BaseSpOptSolver):
    def __init__(self, solver):
        self.spOptSolver = solver
    def solve(self):
        self.spOptSolver.solve()


BaseSpOptExactSolver(mip.Model("name"))

[jGaboardi]

@xf37 @knaaptime @sjsrey

UPDATE

We decided on adopting mip a specific package, which is itself solver agnostic. Currently supports:

• COIN-OR CBC
• Gurobi

Highlights

• region previously used pulp
• migrating models from pulp to mip is straightforward
• find regionalization models from last release of region that still used pulp for implementation

[jGaboardi]

We can close this issue after the following:

• documentation is updated (README.md, etc.)
• at least one functional model is merged into the code base
• other?

[jGaboardi]

Other options to round out the discussion:

• scipy.optimize
• cvxpy
  • cvxopt
• pyomo

[jGaboardi]

closing for now -- solver agnostic is the way to go -- we just have to make sure the include all necessary solvers/wrappers in the requirements, etc.