Minion version 0.8 released
Version 0.8 of Minion is released.
Minion is presented in the following way
MINION is a new constraint solver, which is very fast and scales well as problem size increases. Empirical results on standard benchmarks show orders of magnitude performance gains over state-of-the-art constraint toolkits. These gains increase with problem size --- MINION delivers scalable constraint solving.MINION is a general-purpose constraint solver, with an expressive input language based on the common constraint modelling device of matrix models. Focussing on matrix models supports a lean, highly-optimised implementation. This contrasts with current constraint toolkits, which, in order to provide ever more modelling and solving options, have become progressively more complex at the cost of both performance and usability.
MINION is a black box from the user point of view, deliberately providing few options. This, combined with its raw speed, makes MINION a substantial step towards Puget's `Model and Run' constraint solving paradigm.
From the relase notes for version 0.8:
Users who use pre-compiled binaries should find any existing problem
files run the same as before. Building from source has changed
substantially, with Minion now requiring both the 'cmake' build system
and 'boost' C++ library. Full instructions are included in the source
package.[a lot of bug fixes]
Note that Tailor is not part of the standard Minion distribution anymore; it is
released separately.
Tailor can be downloaded here.