[gecode-users] restart search at new solution

[Kish Shen]

Hi,

I am looking at including restart-based search into the ECLiPSe Gecode 
interface, and I have some questions that I hope you could help me with.

The MPG states that a CutOff (which seems to be in terms of number of 
failures) must be included with a restart-base search. However, to me,
it seems an alternative approach is to restart for each solution, in 
particular, with BAB search when you are looking for the optimal 
solution. I assume this was what the old RESTART search engine did?
Is it possible to do this? I can't figure out how to do this from the 
MPG section on restart search, and a quick look at some of the reference 
documentation.

On a more specific level, I am not quite sure how to implement 
restart-based search for my interface. Ideally, I would like to make as 
little modification to my existing code as possible. Currently, I have
a class GecodeSearch, which has a

Search::Engine: sengine;

and I assign a particular search engine to this when the user request a 
particular search engine to use:

sengine = Search::bab(solver, o);

so I would like to do something similar for a restart-based engine.
I have got the following to compile:

sengine = Search::bab(solver,o);
sengine = Search::rbs(solver, metastop, sengine, o);

However, it is not clear to me if this is the correct thing to do, 
should the same sengine be used for the bab and rbs search?

Thanks in advance for any help/information!

Cheers,

Kish