Using OR-Tools Pip for Python

This guide provides instructions for installing and running OR-Tools for Python on various Linux distributions.
Users need Python 3.8+ and should follow the provided commands for their specific Linux distribution to install necessary packages.
OR-Tools can be installed using pip, and example code can be downloaded from the GitHub repository.
After installation, users can run a basic example to confirm their OR-Tools setup.

Introduction

This guide gets you started with OR-Tools in Python with a simple working example.

Although these instructions might also work on other Linux variants, we have only tested them on machines meeting the following requirements:

Alpine Edge 64-bit (x86_64)
Centos 7 LTS 64-bit (x86_64)
Debian SID 64-bit (x86_64)
Debian 11 (bullseye) 64-bit (x86_64)
Fedora 38 64-bit (x86_64)
Fedora 37 64-bit (x86_64)
OpenSuse Leap 64-bit (x86_64)
Ubuntu 24.10 64-bit (x86_64)
Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 64-bit (x86_64)
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 64-bit (x86_64)

The following sections describe the prerequisites for installing OR-Tools.

You must have Python 3.8+ installed.

To install Python 3.8+, open a terminal window and enter:

apk add python3-dev py3-pip py3-wheel

sudo yum install -y python3 python3-devel python3-pip numpy

sudo apt install -y python3-dev python3-pip python3-venv

sudo dnf install -y python3-devel python3-pip python3-venv

sudo dnf install -y python3-devel python3-pip python3-venv

sudo zypper install -y python3-devel python3-pip python3-wheel

sudo apt install -y python3-dev python3-pip python3-venv

sudo apt install -y python3-dev python3-pip python3-venv

sudo apt install -y python3-dev python3-pip python3-venv

You can check your Python 3 installation using:

python3 --version
python3 -c "import platform; print(platform.architecture()[0])"
python3 -m pip --version

Assuming the prerequisite software is installed on your Linux, take the following steps:

python3 -m pip install -U --user ortools

Or, to install it system wide:

sudo python3 -m pip install -U ortools

To uninstall OR-Tools, issue the following commands:

python3 -m pip uninstall ortools

The example code is located in the python_or-tools repository.

Download the repository as a zip file and extract it, or clone the repository:

git clone -b v9.12 --depth 1 https://github.com/or-tools/python_or-tools

From the python_or-tools directory:

Run the binary using:

python3 basic_example.py

Congratulations! You've just run an application with OR-Tools, you are ready to get started with OR-Tools.