Using ProB with KODKOD
As of version 1.3.5 ProB can make use of Kodkod as an alternate way of solving constraints.
Kodkod provides a relational interface to SAT solvers and is the heart of the Alloy tool.
How to enable Kodkod
For the command-line version you need to call prob as follows:
probcli -p KODKOD TRUE
Note: to experiment with Kodkod you may want to try out the command:
probcli -p KODKOD TRUE -repl
If in addition you want see a graphical representation of the solutions found you can use the following command and open the out.dot file using dotty or GraphViz:
probcli -p KODKOD TRUE -repl -evaldot ~/out.dot
For the ProB Tcl/Tk Version you should select the menu command "Enable Kodkod for Properties" in the Preferences menu.
What can be translated
- Types:
- Basic Types: Deferred Sets, enumerated sets, integers, booleans
- Sets of basic types
- Relations between basic types
- Higher-order types (sets of sets) are not supported
- Operators:
- Predicates: &, or, =>, <=>, not, !, #, =, /=
- Booleans: TRUE, FALSE, BOOL, bool(...)
- Sets: {..,...} {x|P}, POW, card, Cartesian product, \/, /\, -, :, /:, /<:, <<: /<<:
- Numbers: n..m, >, <, >=, <=, +, -, *, SIGMA(x).(P|x)
- Relations: <->, |->, dom, ran, id, <|, <<|, |>, |>>, ~, [...], <+, prj1, prj2, closure1
- x : S+->T, x:S-->T, ..., lambda
- currently no operations on sequences are supported
- Some limitations:
- If integers are used, a predicate can only be translated if a static analysis can estimate the interval of its possible values.
- Generally only complete predicates are translated or nothing at all, unless you set the KODKOD_ONLY_FULL preference to FALSE.
When is the Kokod translation used
Once enabled, the Kodkod translation will be used in the following circumstances:
- for solving PROPERTIES
- constraint-based assertion checking (-cbc_assertions command for probcli or the "Check Assertions on Constants" command in the menu Verify -> Constraint-Based Checking)
- constraint-based deadlock checking
- in the Eval Console in the ProB Tcl/Tk version
- for the REPL in probcli (probcli -p KODKOD TRUE -repl)
SAT solver
By default Kodkod in ProB uses the bundled SAT4J solver. You can switch to using minisat by putting a current version of libminisat.jnilib into ProB's lib directory.
Similarly, as of ProB 1.6.1-beta5 you can also use the Solver lingeling or glucose by dropping liblingeling.dylib or libglucose.dylib into ProB's lib folder (for Mac OS X; for Linux the extension will be different). You can control the solver being used using the KODKOD_SAT_SOLVER preference (which has four possible values: sat4j, minisat, lingeling, glucose).
These files can be downloaded from the Kodkod download site.
More Preferences
If you set KODKOD_ONLY_FULL to FALSE, then the Kodkod translation can be applied to part of a predicate. In other words, the predicate (such as the PROPERTIES) are partitioned into two parts: one that can be understood by Kodkod and the rest which will be dealt with by ProB's solver.
You can also enable symmetry by using the preference KODKOD_SYMMETRY. By default, ProB will set this value to 0, i.e., symmetry is off. This means that Kodkod can also be used within set comprehensions. By setting the preference to a value higher than 0 you will enable symmetry within Kodkod, which may mean that not all solutions will be returned. Setting the value too high may be counter productive; Kodkod's recommended default is 20.
Finally, you can control the number of solutions that Kodkod computes in one go using the preference KODKOD_MAX_NR_SOLS. E.g., if you are interested in only one solution and KODKOD_ONLY_FULL is TRUE, then you should set this value to 1.
More details
You can also have a look at these Wiki pages: