[gecode-users] Gecode 3.0.0, Gecode modeling tutorial and Gecode/FlatZinc 1.4 released

[Guido Tack]

Dear all,

we are happy and proud to announce our next major release:

                  Gecode 3.0.0
           http://www.gecode.org

as well as the brand-new tutorial documentation on modeling with Gecode.

This release is a major consolidation release: interfaces have been  
cleaned up (consistent parameter passing, consistent naming, simpler  
Gist interface, namespaces for operator overloading); some  
functionality has been extended (propagators can be non-monotonic;  
branchings support tie-breaking and random variable and value  
selection); some functionality that did not meet our quality goals has  
been removed (complete set variables, reflection); usage has been  
simplified (auto-linking on Windows, more commonly used filename  
extensions); important aspects have been optimized (memory management,  
memory usage and efficiency on 64bit machines). These cleanups were in  
particular necessary to make Gecode easier to document (this release  
is the first to be accompanied by tutorial documentation explaining  
how to model with Gecode).

The complete changelog is available at
	http://www.gecode.org/changes.html

We also release

                  Gecode/FlatZInc 1.4
           http://www.gecode.org/flatzinc.html

which has been updated to work with Gecode 3.0.0, as well as received  
minor fixes.

On our web site, you find source packages, as well as binary packages  
for Windows and Mac OS.

Cheers,
	Guido