Additions, Changes and Removals in Gurobi 12.0#

Release Highlights#

  • Gurobi V12 provides performance improvements accross a variety of model families. The details for these improvements will be provided after the beta period.

  • Gurobi now supports nonlinear constraints of the form \(y = f(x)\), where \(f\) is a multivariate function given by a closed-form expression.

New features#

Nonlinear Constraints#

Gurobi now supports nonlinear constraints of the form \(y = f(x)\) where \(f: \mathbf{R}^n \rightarrow \mathbf{R}\). Gurobi will solve models containing such constraints to global optimality using a branch-and-bound algorithm. The function \(f\) is provided as a closed form expression in gurobipy (see below) and as expression trees from C, C++, Java and .NET.

Querying allocated memory#

New attributes MemUsed and MaxMemUsed have been added to the Model class in all APIs. They allow you to query the current and maximum amount of RAM allocated by the environment holding that model.

Corresponding what values MEMUSED and MAXMEMUSED can be used to query these values from callbacks. See Callback Codes for details.

More information from MULTIOBJ callback#

The MULTIOBJ callback can now provide information about each optimization pass: status, best objective value, best bound, mip gap, simplex iteration count, explored and unexplored nodes, runtime and work. See the What values table for more details.

In-place conversion of models to fixed#

New functions have been added to convert a MIP model into a continuous one. In particular, the integer variables get fixed to their values in the solution loaded. Instead of creating a new model, these functions modify the existing model with which they are invoked.

Available in C, C++, Java, .NET and Python.

Tuning multi-objective models#

The parameter MultiObjSettings can now be used on the command-line when invoking grbtune to tune one or more multi-objective models. For each model, the first setting, or set of parameters, will be applied to the first multi-objective iteration, etc. The parameters specified this way are considered fixed by the tuner. Hence, they overrule any parameter values selected by the tuner.

In case of the API, for each individually model mutli-objective settings can be added via the multi-objective environments.

Restrict to set of parameters to tune on#

With the parameter TuneParams user can provide a comma-separated list of JSON files containing parameters with their properties the tuner should consider. For each parameter a minimum, a maximum value can be defined or a list values the parameter can take. An example is shown in the parameter description of TuneParams.

New attribute for models solved with Barrier#

Models that have been solved using the barrier algorithm (i.e. continuous LP models and continuous convex QP models) have a new attribute BarPi that gives dual values for each constraint in the best barrier iterate.

New attributes for LP models#

Model attributes ObjBound and ObjBoundC are now available for LP models (they were previously only available for MIP models).

Callback settable parameters#

A few parameters that control the termination of the solving process can be modified from within a callback. Those are: TimeLimit, WorkLimit, NodeLimit, BarIterLimit, PumpPasses. This makes it easier for users to implement custom termination criteria that, for example, set a time limit based on dynamic solving process data like the current incumbent objective value. How to do that for the different APIs is illustrated here.

Changes to gurobipy#

Nonlinear expression support#

gurobipy now supports building nonlinear expressions natively using existing Var and MVar objects and Python operators. These expressions can be added directly to a model as nonlinear constraints using Model.addConstr or Model.addGenConstrNL.

The new NLExpr modeling object provides the core functionality. Documentation for this class is a good starting point to learn what is possible. The new nlfunc module adds python functions defining sine, cosine, exponential, logarithm, and others for use in expression construction.

Nonlinear modeling is also integrated with the matrix-friendly API through the new MNLExpr class.

Asynchronous optimization#

gurobipy now supports asynchronous optimization through the methods Model.optimizeAsync and Model.sync. This allows an optimization solve to be started as a background task, enabling a simpler approach to foreground progress monitoring than callbacks.

Logging changes#

The behaviour of the parameter LogToConsole has changed in gurobipy. Previously, setting LogToConsole=0 suppressed log messages to standard output and prevented messages from being sent to the Python logging module. With Gurobi V12, setting LogToConsole=0 only suppresses standard output; log messages are still sent to the Python logger. See Monitoring Progress - Logging for further details on usage.

Deprecated functionality#

If you are upgrading from a previous version of Gurobi, we recommend first running your code with Gurobi 11 and warnings enabled to catch deprecations in gurobipy. Fixing these deprecated usages will help to keep compatibility for Gurobi V12 and later versions. Warnings can be enabled by running your code with the -X dev or -W default flags. See the Python Development Mode or warnings package documentation for further details.

In Gurobi V12, the following usage is deprecated and will be removed in a future version:

Removal of deprecated functionality#

  • The three-argument signature Model.addConstr(lhs, sense, rhs) has been removed, leaving only Model.addConstr(constr, name). Separate (lhs, sense, rhs) arguments can still be passed to Model.addLConstr and Model.addQConstr.

  • Directly calling the MVar constructor is no longer supported.

  • The following undocumented classes were removed from the gurobipy namespace so can no longer be addressed directly:

    • AttrConstClass, CallbackClass, ErrorConstClass, ParamConstClass, and StatusConstClass have been removed. To access Gurobi constants, use the equivalent attributes in the GRB namespace instead: GRB.Attr, GRB.Callback, GRB.Error, GRB.Param, and GRB.Status.

    • ParamClass, GenExprAbs, GenExprAnd, GenExprMax, GenExprMin, GenExprNorm, and GenExprOr have been removed.

Other notable changes#

New default value for FuncNonlinear#

The default value of the FuncNonlinear parameter has changed. The new default (value 1) will use a dynamic outer-approximation approach for all univariate general functions constraints (unless their FuncNonlinear attribute is set to 0, in which case a static piecewise-linear approximation will be used instead).

Providing solutions through callbacks for Compute Server#

Gurobi V12 supports inserting user-provided solutions through callbacks in the context of a Compute Server. For additional details, please refer to the corresponding APIs in C, C++, Java, .NET, and Python.

New use-case for IgnoreNames#

When writing files, if the IgnoreNames parameter is set to 1, the names written in the files are now default names instead of the actual names of the objects.

Reduced memory to store solutions#

The amount of memory required to store solutions in the pool has been greatly reduced in Gurobi V12. This change applies to most models, and will not increase the memory used when it doesn’t apply. It facilitates the handling of very large numbers of solutions in the solution pool.

Printing solution quality at the end of a solve#

You can now use the --printquality switch with the Gurobi command-line tool to get some information about the solution quality at the end of a solve.

Signatures in LP and MPS files#

The Gurobi Optimizer inserts a Signature comment when writing an LP or MPS file. This signature facilitates the proper identification of the owner of a model, and the handling of your data when you submit models to Gurobi for support.

For an LP file, this could look like this:

\ LP format - for model browsing. Use MPS format to capture full model detail.
\ Signature: 0x879dda9303b81740
Minimize
...

The signature is computed from the LICENSEID field in the license used when writing the model. It is an anonymized form of the LICENSEID, such that only Gurobi staff can decode the LICENSEID from the signature. It is different for different models, even when the same LICENSEID is used. It is included for all types of LP and MPS files, including REW and RLP formats.

Support for XZ compression tool#

In addition to .zip, .gz, .bz2, and .7z compression formats, Gurobi V12 supports .xz extension if the appropriate tool is installed. See the file format section in the reference manual for details on Gurobi file formats.

Deprecated functionality#

With Gurobi V12 we deprecate several flags of the command-line tools gurobi_cl and grbtune. The functionality of these flags can now be achieved with parameters.

Deprecation of the interactive shell#

The Gurobi interactive shell (gurobi.sh and gurobi.bat) is deprecated since version 11.0.2 and will be removed in a future release. Please set up your own Python environment to use gurobipy. For installation instruction see https://support.gurobi.com/hc/en-us/articles/360044290292