Binary packages are available for some platforms from Bintray.

MibS is a solver for mixed integelibrr bilevel optimization problems. For an introduction to bilevel optimization, see this slide deck. A somewhat outdated but still useful introduction to MibS is here.

MiBS should work on all major patforms (OS X, Linux, and Windows), though the software is in active development and most recent testing has been on Linux.

MibS depends on the CHiPPS, Cbc, and [SYMPHONY] (https://projects.coin-or.org/SYMPHONY) projects of COIN-OR. If you already have these installed, you can build and link MibS against the installed version. Otherwise, by following the instruction below, you'll be able to download, build, and install all dependencies.

Most Linux distributions come with all the required tools installed. To obtain the source code, open a terminal and do

git clone https://www.github.com/tkralphs/MibS

To build from source, there is a script that fetches dependent projects and builds automatically. To get the script and perform the build, do

cd MibS
git clone https://github.com/coin-or-tools/BuildTools/

and then execute

BuildTools/get.dependencies.sh fetch
BuildTools/get.dependencies.sh build --quiet

This will build all required dependencies and MibS itself. Afterwards, the binaries will be installed in the directory Mibs/build/bin and the libraries in the directory MibS/build/lib. If you wish to install in a different directory, such as /usr/local, then run the command

BuildTools/get.dependencies.sh install --prefix=/path/to/install/dir

After installation, you will also need to add /your/install/dir/bin to your PATH variable in your .bashrc and also add /your/install/dir/lib to your LD_LIBRARY_PATH if you want to link to COIN libraries.

By far, the easiest way to build on Windows is with the GNU autotools and the MinGW compilers.

1. The first step is to install either Msys2 or CYGWIN. If you don't already have CYGWIN installed, it is recommended to use MSys2, since it provides a minimal toolset that is easy to install.
2. To get MSys2, either download the installer here or download and unzip MSys2 base from here.
3. Either run msys2_shell.bat or manually add msys64\usr\bin, msys64\mingw32\bin, and msys64\mingw64\bin to your Windows path.
4. Open a Windows terminal and type

bash
pacman -S make wget tar patch dos2unix diffutils git svn

5. Obtain the source code with

git clone https://www.github.com/tkralphs/MibS

6. To build from source, there is a script that fetches dependent projects and builds automatically. To get the script amd perform the build, do

cd MibS
git clone https://github.com/coin-or-tools/BuildTools/

and then execute

BuildTools/get.dependencies.sh fetch
BuildTools/get.dependencies.sh build --quiet

This will build all required dependencies and MibS itself. Afterwards, the binaries will be installed in the directory Mibs/build/bin and the libraries in the directory MibS/build/lib. If you wish to install in a different directory, such /c/Program\ Files\ (x86)/MibS, then run the command

BuildTools/get.dependencies.sh install --prefix=/path/to/install/dir

7. To use the resulting binaries and/or libraries, you will need to add the full path of the directory MibS\build\bin to your Windows executable search PATH, or, alternatively, copy this directory to C:\Program Files (x86) and add the directory C:\Program Files (x86)\MibS\bin to your Windows executable search PATH. You may also consider copying the build\lib and build\include directories if you want to link to the COIN-OR libraries.

It is possible to use almost the exact same commands to build with the Visual Studio compilers. Before doing any of the above commands in the Windows terminla, first run the vcvarsall.bat script for your version of Visual Studio. Note that you will also need a compatible Fortran compiler if you want to build any projects requiring Fortran (ifort is recommended, but not free). Then follow all the steps above, but replace the build command with

BuildTools/get.dependencies.sh build --quiet --enable-msvc 

OS X is a Unix-based OS and ships with many of the basic components needed to build COIN-OR, but it's missing some things. For examples, the latest versions of OS X come with the clang compiler but no Fortran compiler. You may also be missing the wget utility and subversion and git clients (needed for obtaining source code). The easiest way to get these missing utilitites is to install Homebrew (see http://brew.sh). After installation, open a terminal and do

brew install gcc wget svn git

git clone https://www.github.com/tkralphs/MibS

To build from source, there is a script that fetches dependent projects and builds automatically. To get the script amd perform the build, do

cd MibS
git clone https://github.com/coin-or-tools/BuildTools/

and then execute

BuildTools/get.dependencies.sh fetch
BuildTools/get.dependencies.sh build --quiet

This will build all required dependencies and MibS itself. Afterwards, the binaries will be installed in the directory Mibs/build/bin and the libraries in the directory MibS/build/lib.

With this setup, clang will be used for compiling C++ by default and gfortran will be used for Fortran. Since clang uses the GNU standard library, gfortran is compatible.

If you want to use the gcc compiler provided by Homebrew, then replace the build command above with

BuildTools/get.dependencies.sh build --quiet CC=gcc-5 CXX=g++-5

If you wish to install in a different directory, such as /usr/local, then run the command

BuildTools/get.dependencies.sh install --prefix=/path/to/install/dir

After installation, you will also need to add /your/install/dir/bin to your PATH variable in your .bashrc and also add /your/install/dir/lib to your DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH if you want to link to COIN libraries.

To solve a bilevel program, you must provide both an MPS file and an auxiliary information file that specifies which variables and constraints are associated with the each level. Then call mibs like this:

<build_or_install_dir>/bin/mibs -Alps_instance file.mps -MibS_auxiliaryInfoFile aux_file.txt

It is also possible to specify additional settings in a parameter file with, e.g.,

<build_or_install_dir>/bin/mibs -param <build_or_install_dir>/MibS/src/mibs.par

MibS has many parameters. See the example parameter file mibs.par and the header file MibParam.h for explanations. You can also find a detailed description of MibS here. Furthermore, to conduct the experiments illustrated in this report, see the README file in the directory scripts.

HELP

Please post questions and issues to the github project page for MibS.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

MibS was developed with support from

• National Science Foundation (Grants CMMI-1435453 and CMMI-0728011)
• Lehigh University
• Zuse Institute Berlin
• Research Campus Modal "Mathematical Optimization and Data Analysis Laboratories" funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF Grant 05M14ZAM) and by the DFG SFB/Transregio 154

http://github.com/tkralphs/MibS

Enjoy!