The OKlibrary

The OKlibrary is an open-source research platform and generative library for generalised SAT solving (released under GPLv3).

• It contains tools to tackle "intractable problems".
• The "SAT problem" (satisfiability of propositional formulas) is at its centre, but the whole world of problems in "NP" is targeted.
• The core library provides new abstractions for "generalised satisfiability problems", together with efficient algorithms and implementations.
• A further aim is to make available all (open source) tools
  • in the direct context (other solvers and libraries for example, also for graph colouring etc.)
  • as well as in the wider context (statistics tools and computer algebra for example).

Current status

• The current version is 0.2.1.6.
• The BETA RELEASE is planned with version 0.2.2 (anticipated 30.11.2011).
• The PRE-ALPHA RELEASE is planned with version 0.2.3 (anticipated 31.3.2012).
• The ALPHA RELEASE is planned with version 0.2.4 (anticipated 30.6.2012).
• The RELEASE is planned with version 0.3 (anticipated 31.1.2013).

On-line documentation

The local documentation gives access to the "local home page", the index page for the documentation as on your system.

• This is a copy of the documentation on one of the developers machines.
• It shall show you the documentation on a real working system.
• So information about the state of installed external sources is only there to show an example (on every installed system it might look different).
• And links from doxygen-created pages to external html-pages won't work, since the link is an absolute path-name (on the developers machine).
• These absolute path-names are required by the build system, and they are also informative --- to show you where what is located (that is, on a real system, not on the Internet-mirror).

Communication happens via the following mailing list:

1. users

Download

The download directory contains three kind of packages:

1. Minimal packages, with just the repository (also checked out) and the directory scaffolding.
2. Standard packages, which contain additionally the pre-created documentation (so that is doesn't need to be built).
3. Full packages, which additionally contain also all sources for external sources used by the library.

If in doubt, then download the full package.

• Every package yields (directly!) a directory "OKplatform".
• This is actually the directory to work with, and all build processes happen inside this directory.
• To extract this directory from the package, use tar -xjf package-name.
• For building the OKlibrary, change into directory OKplatform, and read the README file.
• For the release history see the history page of the local documentation (use the link above).

For downloading single external sources, go to the OKplatform directory.

The public source-code repository

As an open-source library, you can participate in the development process, and/or clone/fork the platform:

• "Git" is the (distributed) source-control system we are using.
• At the public git repository the repository can be inspected.
• Normally, downloading from there won't be needed since the above packages contain a clone of this public git repository.
• The git-address to clone from is "git://github.com/OKullmann/oklibrary.git". This is the default when pulling from a package.
• Collaboration happens at Github, via creating a "fork" of the OKlibrary there, changing this clone, and then inviting to pull the changes.

Remarks on the release process

Some remarks regarding the packages (aspects which might be unusual):

• Due to the character of the OKlibrary as an "active library", there is no such thing as "building it" (once), but the library comes with the ability of "permanent building" of the many parts of the library. For further discussions of such aspects see the aims-page of the local documentation.
• Due to the active character of the library, and also due to its research character, the library always comes with the (git) repository.
• Due to the extensive amount of external sources, the full package is quite big. We do not provide an "external sources only" package, since the other parts in the full package are "negligible" from the size perspective.
• Packages are permanently updated, reflected by running numbers, while the version number (with four digits) is only advanced from time to time (according to the milestones).
• The four digit version number has the following meaning:
  1. An advance in the first digit is a "big public event" (watch the news).
  2. Advancing the second digit gets a short public announcement at places like "SatLive".
  3. Advancing the third digit is an internal event, to be documented on the mailing lists.
  4. Advancing the fourth digit is an automatic event, which happens when some subgoal is reached (as can be seen in the plans).
  As mentioned above, the running number is needed, since we might release several packages a day, while advancing the version number might take weeks.
• Updating your already existing OKlibrary-installation can happen (at least) in the following ways:
  1. You can pull over the Internet from the central public OKlibrary-clone, just by using git pull (this needs git installed).
  2. If you didn't do anything inside your old installation, then you can also just replace it altogether by a new one.
  3. If you installed some external sources, but you didn't change the OKlibrary itself (inside directory "OKlib"), then you can also just replace directory OKlib (which is provided already with the minimal package).
  4. In any case, if you have downloaded the (new) full package, then at least you should replace the old OKplatform/ExternalSources/sources by the new directory (if you don't have special reasons to keep old packages).
• Due to the research character and its continuous process, there is no distinction between "stable" and "unstable" releases. If you wish start using the OKlibrary, download the latest package, and later perform updates as explained before.

Last modified: Mon May 2 13:42:57 BST 2011