Setting Up

After you have downloaded and compiled the current Yasol version for your operating system you are ready to go. A few things have to be kept in mind when starting Yasol:

• Ensure that the Yasol.ini file is present in the directory you want to call the solver from. This file is needed to load the solver setting. If it is not found the solver starts with very basic setting resulting in very long runtime.
• Ensure that a Folder logs is present in the directory you want to call the solver from. When running Yasol a file containing additional output information is maintained in this folder and error messages occur if this folder cannot be found.

Note that these requirements are fulfilled when starting Yasol from "Your_Yasol_Directory/bin", where the executable is located after compiling.

Calling the Solver

In order to solve an instance first be sure it adheres to the QLP file format. The solver is invoked using the following call:

./Yasol_CPLEX <Instance> [<InformationLevel>] [<TimeLimit>]

The parameters in brackets are optional. With an increasing information level more output is generated mainly used for debugging purposes. If a time limit is specified the solution process is canceled after the given number seconds. Additionally, we overloaded the information level parameter:

• Information level "-60": The DEP of the binarized instance is built and solved via the linked MIP solver.
• Information level "-61": The DEP of the instance is built and solved via the linked MIP solver.
• Information level "Reduce": For instances with universal constraint system this call will return a standard QIP without universal constraints.

Note that these option are not excessively tested yet.

Interpreting a Solution

The main output the solver provides is the optimal objective value and the first stage solution. The principal variation, i.e. the variable assignment representing optimal play and thus the optimal objective value, can be retrieved from the logs/solutions.log file. Note that in this case "maintainPv" has to be set to one in the Yasol.ini file. Further, one can explicitly request a solution file solely for this instance. This can be done be setting "writeOutputFile=1" in the Yasol.ini file. Then, an XML formatted solution file will be created after the optimal solution was found. The name of the solution file will be the original instance file name with an attached .sol.