CUTEst

The Constrained and Unconstrained Testing Environment with safe threads (CUTEst) for optimization software

See the wiki for download and installation instructions

Installation

Precompiled libraries and executables

We provide precompiled CUTEst libraries and executables in the releases tab for Linux, macOS (Intel & Silicon) and Windows.

Installation from source

CUTEst can be installed using the Meson build system (all commands below are to be run from the top of the source tree):

meson setup builddir -Dtests=true
meson compile -C builddir
meson install -C builddir
meson test -C builddir

For more comprehensive Meson options (-Doption=value), including how to compile CUTEst in quaduple precision, please see meson_options.txt.

CUTEst can also be installed via the "make" build system based on ARCHDefs. To use this variant, follow the instructions in the CUTEst wiki.

How to use the static libraries generated by CUTEst

By default, the CUTEst Meson build system compiles static libraries: libcutest_single.a and libcutest_double.a (as well as libcutest_quadruple.a if built with -Dquadruple=true). These libraries are incomplete by design, they contain undefined symbols corresponding to problem-specific functions that must be provided by the decoded SIF problem.

The package SIFDecode describes how to decode a SIF problem and generate the corresponding problem library. This results in a workflow like the following:

# Linux / FreeBSD
gfortran -shared -Wl,--whole-archive libcutest_double.a libsif.a -Wl,--no-whole-archive -o libpb.so

# Windows
gfortran -shared -Wl,--whole-archive libcutest_double.a libsif.a -Wl,--no-whole-archive -o libpb.dll

# macOS
gfortran -dynamiclib -Wl,-all_load libcutest_double.a libsif.a -Wl,-noall_load -o libpb.dylib

This is the classical approach, where a custom library is built for each decoded SIF problem. It has been in use for decades and remains fully supported.

New approach with shared libraries and trampolines

A modern alternative is now available. It is possible to build shared libraries where missing symbols are resolved dynamically using symbol forwarding, via the mechanism in cutest_trampoline.f90.

To enable this feature, CUTEst must be built with shared library support:

meson setup builddir -Ddefault_library=shared
meson compile -C builddir
meson install -C builddir

It requires the version v2.5.1 of CUTEst.

With this approach, there is no need to generate a new combined library for each decoded SIF problem. Instead, you dynamically load the decoded problem library at runtime.

The only user-facing addition is the subroutines cutest_load_routines_ and cutest_unload_routines_, which allows you to specify the path to the SIF problem library.

At runtime, the CUTEst shared library will forward the symbols elfun_, group_, and range_ to the specified library.

A Fortran module named CUTEST_TRAMPOLINE_* is also available for seamless integration in Fortran projects.

Interfaces

• CUTEst.jl is the Julia interface of CUTEst.

• PyCUTEst is the Python interface of CUTEst.

• MatCUTEst is the MATLAB interface of CUTEst.

• CUTEst also provides a C interface; details can be found in the README.C.

Note

The latest features added in the release v2.3.0 of CUTEst require at least the version v2.6.1 of SIFDecode.