CVSROOT: /cvs/ppl
Module name: w3ppl
Changes by: roberto(a)cs.unipr.it 2002-07-02 07:52:15
Modified files:
htdocs/Documentation: Documentation.raw
Log message:
The representation we use for closed polyhedra is not "dual":
it is "double".
Patches:
http://www.cs.unipr.it/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/w3ppl/htdocs/Documentation/Docume…
After months of hard work, we have the pleasure to announce the
release 0.4 of the Parma Polyhedra Library.
This revolutionary release is a big step toward functional
completeness of the library. We now have the best available support
for Not Necessarily Closed (NNC) polyhedra (that is, polyhedra that
can be expressed by a mixture of equalities and strict and non-strict
inequalities). A complete C interface has been added and the Prolog
interface has been extended and generalized (now supporting GNU
Prolog, SICStus Prolog, SWI-Prolog and YAP). Support has been added
for timeout-guarded operations. Portability has also been greatly
improved: the library should now be completely written in standard
C/C++, compiles cleanly under three major C++ compilers and has been
roughly tested on a handful of different computing platforms. Besides
that, almost everything has been improved and changed (forget about
any kind of compatibility with release 0.3).
For more information, visit the PPL web site at
http://www.cs.unipr.it/ppl/
The PPL development team:
Roberto Bagnara <bagnara(a)cs.unipr.it>
Patricia M. Hill <hill(a)comp.leeds.ac.uk>
Elisa Ricci <ericci(a)cs.unipr.it>
Enea Zaffanella <zaffanella(a)cs.unipr.it>
New and Changed Features
========================
o Added full support for Not Necessarily Closed (NNC) polyhedra:
- creation of strict inequality constraints and mixed constraint
systems;
- creation of closure points and extended generator systems;
- added classes C_Polyhedron (for the representation of Closed
polyhedra) and NNC_Polyhedron (the user no longer can create
Polyhedron objects);
- added topology compatibility checks to avoid mixing objects of
the two kinds;
- added explicit constructors to create a polyhedron of a given
topology kind starting from a polyhedron of the other kind;
- added methods Polyhedron::is_topologically_closed() and
Polyhedron::topological_closure_assign();
- implemented methods Polyhedron::minimized_constraints() and
Polyhedron::minimized_generators() to obtain minimal
descriptions, both for closed and for NNC polyhedra.
o New method Polyhedron::time_elapse_assign(const Polyhedron&):
it computes the time-elapse operation defined in
N. Halbwachs, Y.-E. Proy, and P. Roumanoff.
Verification of real-time systems using linear relation analysis.
Formal Methods in System Design, 11(2):157-185, 1997.
o New method Polyhedron::is_bounded(): it returns true if and only
if the polyhedron is bounded, i.e., finite.
o New methods Polyhedron::bounds_from_above(const LinExpression& e)
and Polyhedron::bounds_from_below(const LinExpression& e): they
return true if and only if the linear expression `e' is bounded
from above/below in the polyhedron.
o New, complete C interface. As a demo, a toy solver for pure linear
programming problems has been implemented using this interface.
Notice that solving linear programming problems is completely
outside the scope of the library. As a consequence the toy provided
as a demo is only a toy provided as a demo.
o Revised and completed Prolog interface:
- now supporting GNU Prolog, SICStus Prolog, SWI Prolog and YAP.
- all predicates have been renamed to match their intended
semantics;
- arguments have been reordered where necessary so as to follow the
rule "input arguments before output arguments";
- predicates added so that all the public methods for Polyhedra in
the C++ library are available as Prolog predicates;
- the interface has been extended to allow for closed and not
necessarily closed polyhedra.
o Added support for timeout-guarded operations. It is now possible
for client applications to safely interrupt any exponential
computation paths in the library and get control back in a time
that is a linear function of the space dimension of the object
(polyhedron, system of constraints or generators) of highest
dimension on which the library is operating upon.
o The methods named convex_hull_* and convex_difference_*
have been renamed poly_hull_* and poly_difference_*.
o All methods named *_and_minimize() now return a boolean
flag that is false if the result is empty.
o All method and variable names containing the word "vertex"
have been replaced by names containing the word "point"
(some previous uses of the word "vertex" were not formally correct).
o The methods Polyhedron::includes(const Generator&) and
Polyhedron::satisfies(const Constraint&) have been removed,
as well as the enumeration GenSys_Con_Rel.
They have been replaced by the new methods
Polyhedron::relation_with(const Generator&) and
Polyhedron::relation_with(const Constraint&),
which return values of the new enumeration types
Relation_Poly_Gen and Relation_Poly_Con, respectively.
o The method Constraint::coefficient(void) has been renamed
to Constraint::inhomogeneous_term(void).
o The methods Polyhedron::widening_assign() and
Polyhedron::limited_widening_assign() have been renamed
Polyhedron::H79_widening_assign() and
Polyhedron::limited_H79_widening_assign(), respectively.
This emphasizes the fact that they implement extensions
of the widenings introduced in
N. Halbwachs.
Détermination Automatique de Relations Linéaires
Vérifiées par les Variables d'un Programme.
Thèse de 3ème cicle d'informatique,
Université scientifique et médicale de Grenoble,
Grenoble, France, March 1979.
and described in
N. Halbwachs, Y.-E. Proy, and P. Roumanoff.
Verification of real-time systems using linear relation analysis.
Formal Methods in System Design, 11(2):157-185, 1997.
o The library no longer calls abort(): appropriate exceptions
are always thrown instead.
Bugfixes
========
o Fixed a bug whereby creating a point with a negative denominator
caused the library to misbehave.
o Fixed a bug in Polyhedron::add_constraints(ConSys&) whereby
we could have created constraint systems having rows with
different capacities.
o Several other bugs have been fixed.
--
Prof. Roberto Bagnara
Computer Science Group
Department of Mathematics, University of Parma, Italy
http://www.cs.unipr.it/~bagnara/
mailto:bagnara@cs.unipr.it
CVSROOT: /cvs/ppl
Module name: w3ppl
Changes by: roberto(a)cs.unipr.it 2002-07-01 22:02:12
Modified files:
htdocs : ppl.raw
Log message:
The news item about release 0.4 has been slightly improved.
Now links are provided to all the supported Prolog systems.
Patches:
http://www.cs.unipr.it/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/w3ppl/htdocs/ppl.raw.diff?cvsroot…
