Mac OS version

[Ozgur Akgun]

Hi,

I understand that there is no Mac OS version of AIMMS. Are there ane plans to have one?

Regards,

--
Ozgur Akgun

[Guido Diepen]

Hi Ozgur,

at the moment there are no plans for a Mac OS version of AIMMS.

Guido Diepen
AIMMS Specialist

[Guido Diepen]

Hi Ozgur,

just a small addition to my previous answer.

Though the MacOS X platform is not supported, you could try to take a
look at running AIMMS on this platform by making use of the Wine
project (http://www.winehq.org) and see if that works for you. Please
note that running AIMMS under wine is not supported in any way by
Paragon.

I have tried installing and running the windows version of AIMMS with
wine under Linux the other day and was at least able to get AIMMS to
start with it. However, while running AIMMS, there ere some issues
with stability. Because .NET is not yet stable under wine, certain
components of AIMMS that depend on .NET will not be stable either.
Most importantly this means you will have to use the --ide-style-95
command line option and you should refrain from using the GIS
component.

Although my experiment was with AIMMS via wine under Linux, in theory
it should work the same way for MacOS X, at least from what I read on
the wine homepage.

If you do want to try it out yourself, you can use the following
commands to setup everything on your system. Make sure that you have a
recent version of Wine (my experiments were with wine development
version 1.1.37, but the stable version should work also).

#Create directory to download everything to
mkdir ~/AIMMS_under_Wine
cd ~/AIMMS_under_Wine

#Get the latest winetricks
wget http://www.kegel.com/wine/winetricks
#and install some prerequisites
sh winetricks dotnet20 mdac28 win2k

#Get the vcredist prerequisite and the latest AIMMS 3.9.x
wget http://download.aimms.com/aimms/download/data/vcredist_x86-SP1-2/vcredist_x86.exe
wget http://download.aimms.com/aimms/download/data/3.9/4.14098/Aimms-3.9.4.14098.msi

#Install the vcredist
wine vcredist_x86.exe
#And install the downloaded AIMMS installer
wine msiexec /i Aimms-3.9.4.14098.msi

#Start AIMMS with the ide-style-95
wine c:/Program\ Files/Paragon\ Decision\ Technology/AIMMS\ 3.9/Bin/
Aimms.exe --ide-style-95

As mentioned, there are stability issues when running AIMMS via wine.
The following is a list of things that I have already experienced:
* Start page is not working correctly (i.e. clicking on links is not
working correctly)
* Pages containing indexed page or tabbed page objects will lead to a
crash
* Index of all examples project will not work, because it contains a
tabbed page object
* You must use the --ide-style-95 start-up option of AIMMS
* Usage of GIS objects should be avoided

As mentioned before, running AIMMS via wine (on Linux or Mac) is not
supported by Paragon. Therefore, we cannot provide you with any
support on the problems you may encounter.

Guido Diepen
AIMMS Specialist

[Ozgur Akgun]

Thanks for at least thinking about it.

Is the AIMMS binary dependent on other binaries? (solvers?)
And is it completely a managed .NET binary?

Because if these two are the case (actually you can have dependencies gicen they are managed binaries as well) one might try running the AIMMS executable through Mono, instead of Wine.

Mono: http://www.mono-project.com/Main_Page

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Ozgur Akgun

[Alex J]

Wouldnt it be easier to use a virtualisation environment instead of Mono/Wine? 

AIMMS works perfectly fine in a virtualisation environment like VMWare Workstation/ESX. VirtualBox is probably the leading open source / free virtual host if you dont want to pay for VMWare. I have not tried Aimms in VirtualBox but see no reason why it would have problems.

[Ozgur Akgun]

I am pretty sure it would work in a Virtual Machine. If it works on Windows, it works on Windows running on a Virtual machine by definition.
And I do have VMWare in my system, so I can do that.

What I'm trying to accomplish is to save this nice system from the windows-cage, and go cross platform. And if the system is implemented using C# and compiled to IL anyway, its quite easy to get it working with Mono. Moreover this may result in a strategy shift so that the company may try the executable not with only Microsoft's .NET runtime, but with also Mono runtime.

Quite a big achievement with quite a little cost!

These ideas are all valid, if the system is a managed executable. I don't see any reason for it not to be.

Regards,

--
Ozgur Akgun

[Alex J]

I do not think the entire AIMMS system is implemented in .NET, hence it would not be reducible to IL. Wine acts to reproduce Win32 calls rather than the .NET framework. 

[Ozgur Akgun]

If that's the case, then I would choose VM -as you've suggested- rather than Wine.
But again, if it can run through Mono, it would be the best option.

Maybe some person from AIMMS side can clarify?

[Luis Pinto]

Not sure if this helps, but as of 3.10 FR3, AIMMS systems can be deployed as a standalone without the need for installation. Maybe that can help in terms of end-user deployment in Mac OS.

Here is the news from the site (http://www.aimms.com/downloads/aimms/new-features#InstallationFreeAIMMS):

Installation-free AIMMS

AIMMS itself is now available as an executable file that requires no installation at all (for 32-bit Windows), similar to the Installation-free AIMMS Viewer that we already released with AIMMS 3.10 FR2. This installation-free AIMMS makes it very easy to run AIMMS without the need for administrator rights, for example when you’re deploying your application to end-users. You can even deploy AIMMS plus your application in a single installation-free package. These installation-free versions of AIMMS also make it easy to run different Software Updates of AIMMS next to each other.

Cheers,

Luis Pinto

www.unisoma.com.br

[Guido Diepen]

Hi Ozgur and Luis,

On Feb 2, 6:47 pm, Ozgur Akgun <ozgurak...@gmail.com> wrote:
> If that's the case, then I would choose VM -as you've suggested- rather than
> Wine.
> But again, if it can run through Mono, it would be the best option.
>
> Maybe some person from AIMMS side can clarify?

AIMMS is not a managed application, therefore your option of running
it through Mono will not work. The reason why AIMMS has a dependency
on .NET is that there are components within AIMMS that are dependent
on .NET.

Hope this clarifies it enough.

On Feb 2, 7:24 pm, Luis Pinto <luisf...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Not sure if this helps, but as of 3.10 FR3, AIMMS systems can be deployed as
> a standalone without the need for installation. Maybe that can help in terms
> of end-user deployment in Mac OS.

I have not tried this recently anymore, but from what I remember with
one of my earlier tests, the technique used by installation free AIMMS
seemed not compatible with Wine. You are welcome to try though what
the current state of this is :)

Guido Diepen
AIMMS Specialist