File: NEWS.html

package info (click to toggle)
freecell-solver 5.0.0-4
  • links: PTS, VCS
  • area: main
  • in suites: sid
  • size: 4,256 kB
  • sloc: ansic: 28,700; perl: 10,050; xml: 5,600; python: 1,339; sh: 533; cpp: 275; makefile: 20; javascript: 8
file content (2321 lines) | stat: -rw-r--r-- 71,614 bytes parent folder | download | duplicates (4) 
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
397
398
399
400
401
402
403
404
405
406
407
408
409
410
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440
441
442
443
444
445
446
447
448
449
450
451
452
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467
468
469
470
471
472
473
474
475
476
477
478
479
480
481
482
483
484
485
486
487
488
489
490
491
492
493
494
495
496
497
498
499
500
501
502
503
504
505
506
507
508
509
510
511
512
513
514
515
516
517
518
519
520
521
522
523
524
525
526
527
528
529
530
531
532
533
534
535
536
537
538
539
540
541
542
543
544
545
546
547
548
549
550
551
552
553
554
555
556
557
558
559
560
561
562
563
564
565
566
567
568
569
570
571
572
573
574
575
576
577
578
579
580
581
582
583
584
585
586
587
588
589
590
591
592
593
594
595
596
597
598
599
600
601
602
603
604
605
606
607
608
609
610
611
612
613
614
615
616
617
618
619
620
621
622
623
624
625
626
627
628
629
630
631
632
633
634
635
636
637
638
639
640
641
642
643
644
645
646
647
648
649
650
651
652
653
654
655
656
657
658
659
660
661
662
663
664
665
666
667
668
669
670
671
672
673
674
675
676
677
678
679
680
681
682
683
684
685
686
687
688
689
690
691
692
693
694
695
696
697
698
699
700
701
702
703
704
705
706
707
708
709
710
711
712
713
714
715
716
717
718
719
720
721
722
723
724
725
726
727
728
729
730
731
732
733
734
735
736
737
738
739
740
741
742
743
744
745
746
747
748
749
750
751
752
753
754
755
756
757
758
759
760
761
762
763
764
765
766
767
768
769
770
771
772
773
774
775
776
777
778
779
780
781
782
783
784
785
786
787
788
789
790
791
792
793
794
795
796
797
798
799
800
801
802
803
804
805
806
807
808
809
810
811
812
813
814
815
816
817
818
819
820
821
822
823
824
825
826
827
828
829
830
831
832
833
834
835
836
837
838
839
840
841
842
843
844
845
846
847
848
849
850
851
852
853
854
855
856
857
858
859
860
861
862
863
864
865
866
867
868
869
870
871
872
873
874
875
876
877
878
879
880
881
882
883
884
885
886
887
888
889
890
891
892
893
894
895
896
897
898
899
900
901
902
903
904
905
906
907
908
909
910
911
912
913
914
915
916
917
918
919
920
921
922
923
924
925
926
927
928
929
930
931
932
933
934
935
936
937
938
939
940
941
942
943
944
945
946
947
948
949
950
951
952
953
954
955
956
957
958
959
960
961
962
963
964
965
966
967
968
969
970
971
972
973
974
975
976
977
978
979
980
981
982
983
984
985
986
987
988
989
990
991
992
993
994
995
996
997
998
999
1000
1001
1002
1003
1004
1005
1006
1007
1008
1009
1010
1011
1012
1013
1014
1015
1016
1017
1018
1019
1020
1021
1022
1023
1024
1025
1026
1027
1028
1029
1030
1031
1032
1033
1034
1035
1036
1037
1038
1039
1040
1041
1042
1043
1044
1045
1046
1047
1048
1049
1050
1051
1052
1053
1054
1055
1056
1057
1058
1059
1060
1061
1062
1063
1064
1065
1066
1067
1068
1069
1070
1071
1072
1073
1074
1075
1076
1077
1078
1079
1080
1081
1082
1083
1084
1085
1086
1087
1088
1089
1090
1091
1092
1093
1094
1095
1096
1097
1098
1099
1100
1101
1102
1103
1104
1105
1106
1107
1108
1109
1110
1111
1112
1113
1114
1115
1116
1117
1118
1119
1120
1121
1122
1123
1124
1125
1126
1127
1128
1129
1130
1131
1132
1133
1134
1135
1136
1137
1138
1139
1140
1141
1142
1143
1144
1145
1146
1147
1148
1149
1150
1151
1152
1153
1154
1155
1156
1157
1158
1159
1160
1161
1162
1163
1164
1165
1166
1167
1168
1169
1170
1171
1172
1173
1174
1175
1176
1177
1178
1179
1180
1181
1182
1183
1184
1185
1186
1187
1188
1189
1190
1191
1192
1193
1194
1195
1196
1197
1198
1199
1200
1201
1202
1203
1204
1205
1206
1207
1208
1209
1210
1211
1212
1213
1214
1215
1216
1217
1218
1219
1220
1221
1222
1223
1224
1225
1226
1227
1228
1229
1230
1231
1232
1233
1234
1235
1236
1237
1238
1239
1240
1241
1242
1243
1244
1245
1246
1247
1248
1249
1250
1251
1252
1253
1254
1255
1256
1257
1258
1259
1260
1261
1262
1263
1264
1265
1266
1267
1268
1269
1270
1271
1272
1273
1274
1275
1276
1277
1278
1279
1280
1281
1282
1283
1284
1285
1286
1287
1288
1289
1290
1291
1292
1293
1294
1295
1296
1297
1298
1299
1300
1301
1302
1303
1304
1305
1306
1307
1308
1309
1310
1311
1312
1313
1314
1315
1316
1317
1318
1319
1320
1321
1322
1323
1324
1325
1326
1327
1328
1329
1330
1331
1332
1333
1334
1335
1336
1337
1338
1339
1340
1341
1342
1343
1344
1345
1346
1347
1348
1349
1350
1351
1352
1353
1354
1355
1356
1357
1358
1359
1360
1361
1362
1363
1364
1365
1366
1367
1368
1369
1370
1371
1372
1373
1374
1375
1376
1377
1378
1379
1380
1381
1382
1383
1384
1385
1386
1387
1388
1389
1390
1391
1392
1393
1394
1395
1396
1397
1398
1399
1400
1401
1402
1403
1404
1405
1406
1407
1408
1409
1410
1411
1412
1413
1414
1415
1416
1417
1418
1419
1420
1421
1422
1423
1424
1425
1426
1427
1428
1429
1430
1431
1432
1433
1434
1435
1436
1437
1438
1439
1440
1441
1442
1443
1444
1445
1446
1447
1448
1449
1450
1451
1452
1453
1454
1455
1456
1457
1458
1459
1460
1461
1462
1463
1464
1465
1466
1467
1468
1469
1470
1471
1472
1473
1474
1475
1476
1477
1478
1479
1480
1481
1482
1483
1484
1485
1486
1487
1488
1489
1490
1491
1492
1493
1494
1495
1496
1497
1498
1499
1500
1501
1502
1503
1504
1505
1506
1507
1508
1509
1510
1511
1512
1513
1514
1515
1516
1517
1518
1519
1520
1521
1522
1523
1524
1525
1526
1527
1528
1529
1530
1531
1532
1533
1534
1535
1536
1537
1538
1539
1540
1541
1542
1543
1544
1545
1546
1547
1548
1549
1550
1551
1552
1553
1554
1555
1556
1557
1558
1559
1560
1561
1562
1563
1564
1565
1566
1567
1568
1569
1570
1571
1572
1573
1574
1575
1576
1577
1578
1579
1580
1581
1582
1583
1584
1585
1586
1587
1588
1589
1590
1591
1592
1593
1594
1595
1596
1597
1598
1599
1600
1601
1602
1603
1604
1605
1606
1607
1608
1609
1610
1611
1612
1613
1614
1615
1616
1617
1618
1619
1620
1621
1622
1623
1624
1625
1626
1627
1628
1629
1630
1631
1632
1633
1634
1635
1636
1637
1638
1639
1640
1641
1642
1643
1644
1645
1646
1647
1648
1649
1650
1651
1652
1653
1654
1655
1656
1657
1658
1659
1660
1661
1662
1663
1664
1665
1666
1667
1668
1669
1670
1671
1672
1673
1674
1675
1676
1677
1678
1679
1680
1681
1682
1683
1684
1685
1686
1687
1688
1689
1690
1691
1692
1693
1694
1695
1696
1697
1698
1699
1700
1701
1702
1703
1704
1705
1706
1707
1708
1709
1710
1711
1712
1713
1714
1715
1716
1717
1718
1719
1720
1721
1722
1723
1724
1725
1726
1727
1728
1729
1730
1731
1732
1733
1734
1735
1736
1737
1738
1739
1740
1741
1742
1743
1744
1745
1746
1747
1748
1749
1750
1751
1752
1753
1754
1755
1756
1757
1758
1759
1760
1761
1762
1763
1764
1765
1766
1767
1768
1769
1770
1771
1772
1773
1774
1775
1776
1777
1778
1779
1780
1781
1782
1783
1784
1785
1786
1787
1788
1789
1790
1791
1792
1793
1794
1795
1796
1797
1798
1799
1800
1801
1802
1803
1804
1805
1806
1807
1808
1809
1810
1811
1812
1813
1814
1815
1816
1817
1818
1819
1820
1821
1822
1823
1824
1825
1826
1827
1828
1829
1830
1831
1832
1833
1834
1835
1836
1837
1838
1839
1840
1841
1842
1843
1844
1845
1846
1847
1848
1849
1850
1851
1852
1853
1854
1855
1856
1857
1858
1859
1860
1861
1862
1863
1864
1865
1866
1867
1868
1869
1870
1871
1872
1873
1874
1875
1876
1877
1878
1879
1880
1881
1882
1883
1884
1885
1886
1887
1888
1889
1890
1891
1892
1893
1894
1895
1896
1897
1898
1899
1900
1901
1902
1903
1904
1905
1906
1907
1908
1909
1910
1911
1912
1913
1914
1915
1916
1917
1918
1919
1920
1921
1922
1923
1924
1925
1926
1927
1928
1929
1930
1931
1932
1933
1934
1935
1936
1937
1938
1939
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
1947
1948
1949
1950
1951
1952
1953
1954
1955
1956
1957
1958
1959
1960
1961
1962
1963
1964
1965
1966
1967
1968
1969
1970
1971
1972
1973
1974
1975
1976
1977
1978
1979
1980
1981
1982
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
2022
2023
2024
2025
2026
2027
2028
2029
2030
2031
2032
2033
2034
2035
2036
2037
2038
2039
2040
2041
2042
2043
2044
2045
2046
2047
2048
2049
2050
2051
2052
2053
2054
2055
2056
2057
2058
2059
2060
2061
2062
2063
2064
2065
2066
2067
2068
2069
2070
2071
2072
2073
2074
2075
2076
2077
2078
2079
2080
2081
2082
2083
2084
2085
2086
2087
2088
2089
2090
2091
2092
2093
2094
2095
2096
2097
2098
2099
2100
2101
2102
2103
2104
2105
2106
2107
2108
2109
2110
2111
2112
2113
2114
2115
2116
2117
2118
2119
2120
2121
2122
2123
2124
2125
2126
2127
2128
2129
2130
2131
2132
2133
2134
2135
2136
2137
2138
2139
2140
2141
2142
2143
2144
2145
2146
2147
2148
2149
2150
2151
2152
2153
2154
2155
2156
2157
2158
2159
2160
2161
2162
2163
2164
2165
2166
2167
2168
2169
2170
2171
2172
2173
2174
2175
2176
2177
2178
2179
2180
2181
2182
2183
2184
2185
2186
2187
2188
2189
2190
2191
2192
2193
2194
2195
2196
2197
2198
2199
2200
2201
2202
2203
2204
2205
2206
2207
2208
2209
2210
2211
2212
2213
2214
2215
2216
2217
2218
2219
2220
2221
2222
2223
2224
2225
2226
2227
2228
2229
2230
2231
2232
2233
2234
2235
2236
2237
2238
2239
2240
2241
2242
2243
2244
2245
2246
2247
2248
2249
2250
2251
2252
2253
2254
2255
2256
2257
2258
2259
2260
2261
2262
2263
2264
2265
2266
2267
2268
2269
2270
2271
2272
2273
2274
2275
2276
2277
2278
2279
2280
2281
2282
2283
2284
2285
2286
2287
2288
2289
2290
2291
2292
2293
2294
2295
2296
2297
2298
2299
2300
2301
2302
2303
2304
2305
2306
2307
2308
2309
2310
2311
2312
2313
2314
2315
2316
2317
2318
2319
2320
2321
 
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8"/>
<!--[if IE]><meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge"/><![endif]-->
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0"/>
<meta name="generator" content="Asciidoctor 1.5.7.1"/>
<meta name="author" content="Shlomi Fish"/>
<title>Freecell Solver&#8217;s News File</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Open+Sans:300,300italic,400,400italic,600,600italic%7CNoto+Serif:400,400italic,700,700italic%7CDroid+Sans+Mono:400,700"/>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="./asciidoctor.css"/>
</head>
<body class="article">
<div id="header">
<h1>Freecell Solver&#8217;s News File</h1>
<div class="details">
<span id="author" class="author">Shlomi Fish</span><br/>
<span id="email" class="email"><a href="mailto:shlomif@cpan.org">shlomif@cpan.org</a></span><br/>
</div>
</div>
<div id="content">
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_5_0_0_27_oct_2018">Version 5.0.0: (27-Oct-2018)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p><strong>Breaking change</strong>: made the userland headers <code>fcs_user.h</code>, <code>fcs_cl.h</code>, etc.
includable only as <code>#include &lt;freecell-solver/fcs_cl.h&gt;</code>. The API and ABI
should otherwise remain the same.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Add the gen-multiple-pysol-layouts executable to generate several numbered
deals as separate files.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Added the experimental fc-solve-multi solver to solve several files in
one go (not installed by default).</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Rename the AsciiDoc documents from <code>*.txt</code> to <code>\*.asciidoc</code>, in order to
please GitHub/etc. ; updated them and fixed some formatting.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_4_20_0_25_jul_2018">Version 4.20.0: (25-Jul-2018)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>New --iter-output-step command-line flag.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>New --hint-on-intractable command-line flag and functionality.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Add -DFCS_MAX_RANK=&#8230;&#8203; compile time option to set the maximal rank below 13.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Add the -DFCS_BREAK_BACKWARD_COMPAT_2=1 compile-time option which improves
performance but breaks bug-to-bug backward compatibility.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Add the -DFCS_UNSAFE=1 option.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Converted the python-based testing scripts from TAP.Simple to pycotap.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Other speedups and refactorings.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_4_18_0_22_mar_2018">Version 4.18.0: (22-Mar-2018)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Convert the code in board_gen/ from the GPL to the MIT/Expat licence.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Convert the hash function to xxHash ( <a href="https://cyan4973.github.io/xxHash/" class="bare">https://cyan4973.github.io/xxHash/</a> )
for improved performance.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Eliminate several GCC warnings and other cleanups and speedups.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_4_16_0_21_jan_2018">Version 4.16.0: (21-Jan-2018)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Add a new <code>-l looking-glass</code> command line preset, which provides improved
speed.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Add some programs to find the deal index of a card layout.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Remove "freecell-solver-config" - one should use pkg-config instead.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Many small optimizations and cleanups.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_4_14_1_06_oct_2017">Version 4.14.1: (06-Oct-2017)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Fix the compilation and tests when <code>__int128</code> is not available (e.g: on
x86-32 systems).</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Fix a double-free error in certain conditions. Thanks to Theodore Pringle.
See: <a href="https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/fc-solve-discuss/conversations/messages/1554" class="bare">https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/fc-solve-discuss/conversations/messages/1554</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_4_14_0_02_oct_2017">Version 4.14.0: (02-Oct-2017)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Add a new <em>j</em> move of moving cards from freecells to empty columns and
immediately putting cards on top.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Add a new <code>-l cookie-monster</code> command line preset based on it which sports
improved speed.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Fixed a bug with a potential hang with two identically-depthed <code>-dto2</code>
flags:
<a href="https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/fc-solve-discuss/conversations/messages/1549" class="bare">https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/fc-solve-discuss/conversations/messages/1549</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_4_12_1_10_jun_2017">Version 4.12.1: (10-Jun-2017)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Fix dealing of high indexed (above 2G) deals on some 32-bit and/or
MS Windows platforms.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_4_12_0_09_jun_2017">Version 4.12.0: (09-Jun-2017)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Fix a problem where the fc-pro-range-solver ignored game parameters such
as <code>--freecells-num 0</code>. (Thanks to Larry).</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Enable building an MS Windows 32-bit installer using AppVeyor. This will
facilitate releasing them along with the source.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Some more minor cleanups and optimizations.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_4_10_0_31_may_2017">Version 4.10.0: (31-May-2017)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Add some new compile-time options that may make the runtime faster, but
may remove or break functionality.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Convert the python-based automated tests to use cffi, which is more modern
and recommended, instead of ctypes.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Many code cleanups, refactorings, and optimizations.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_4_8_0_20_jan_2017">Version 4.8.0: (20-Jan-2017)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Fix a crash when doing <code>fc-solve -g [non-existent-game]</code> (with tests):
<a href="https://github.com/shlomif/fc-solve/issues/11" class="bare">https://github.com/shlomif/fc-solve/issues/11</a> .</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Mention the final parameter name (instead of just saying "(null)") when
it accepts a non-given argument:
<a href="https://github.com/shlomif/fc-solve/issues/12" class="bare">https://github.com/shlomif/fc-solve/issues/12</a> .</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Remove DEBUG_STATES - it was slow and not really helpful and caused bloat.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Implement condition variables instead of usleep in the depth_dbm_solver .
<a href="https://github.com/shlomif/fc-solve/issues/8" class="bare">https://github.com/shlomif/fc-solve/issues/8</a> . It now also supports processing
batches of items from the queue in a single transaction.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Got a test suite to pass on MS-Windows / AppVeyor:
<a href="https://ci.appveyor.com/project/shlomif/fc-solve" class="bare">https://ci.appveyor.com/project/shlomif/fc-solve</a> .</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Many large and small code cleanups and refactorings.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_4_6_1_14_jan_2017">Version 4.6.1: (14-Jan-2017)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Fix for building the package in certain conditions (originally created for
the Mageia Linux package).</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_4_6_0_04_dec_2016">Version 4.6.0: (04-Dec-2016)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Got the production code and tests to pass on ARM Linux. Previously
<code>fc-solve</code> just hanged there.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Fix the tests and <code>depth_dbm_fc_solver</code> on 32-bit platforms.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Apply the large Freecell Pro seeds deals generation to the board generators
and range solvers.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Option to use <code>__int128</code> instead of libGMP for the DBM solvers - a
significant speed-up, see
<a href="http://fc-solve.shlomifish.org/charts/dbm-solver-__int128-optimisation/" class="bare">http://fc-solve.shlomifish.org/charts/dbm-solver-__int128-optimisation/</a> .</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Revise some awkward phrasing in the README .</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Many small and larger cleanups.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_4_4_0_22_sep_2016">Version 4.4.0: (22-Sep-2016)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Add the <code>-l one-big-family</code>, or <code>-l obf</code> for short, preset which improves
the average performance for solving Freecell deals.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Add the <code>transpose-freecell-board.py</code> utility to transpose a board from
having stacks-in-columns to a stacks-in-lines format acceptable by fc-solve.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Fix a bug where using a flare-based scan while incrementally increasing
the iterations limit could have created a situation where one scan gets all
the iterations.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Remove make-gnome-freecell-board (GNOME Freecell was discontinued)
and make-aisleriot-freecell-board (as AisleRiot no longer has numbered deals).</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Fix some crashes that were found using
<a href="http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/afl/">American Fuzzy Lop</a>, caused due to misuse of
the command line arguments or the input board format.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Fix a major regression bug in the <code>depth_dbm_fc_solve</code> and possibly related
solvers that prevented it from making progress.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Some optimisations for improving general performance on all presets.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Many code cleanups and refactorings.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_4_2_0_25_mar_2016">Version 4.2.0: (25-Mar-2016)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>New command-line preset <code>-l conspiracy-theory</code> or <code>-l ct</code> for short that is
faster than <code>-l as</code> on average.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Bug fix: some error messages are not emitted to STDERR instead of STDOUT.
Furthermore, the exit code on some failures is now non-zero.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Bug fix: flares names in the flares plan is now their exact strings instead
of any possible beginning of them.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Add a compile-time option to not compile the FC-Pro moves count (used
primarily for determining the shortest flares). It is
<code>-DFCS_WITHOUT_FC_PRO_MOVES_COUNT=1</code> .</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Bug fix: properly clean-up solution_moves on recycle.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Bug fix: fix the output of the Freecell&#8217;s dashes in non-parsable output.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Add a compile-time option (<code>-DFCS_BREAK_BACKWARD_COMPAT_1</code>) to break some
backward compatibility, such as old functions, cards with "10" instead of "T",
trailing whitespace in output, and the non-"-p" output of states. This makes
the binaries smaller and faster but may break some existing functionality.
Enabling it is not recommended.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Freecell Solver now uses <a href="https://travis-ci.org/">Travis-CI</a> to build and
test the code in several configurations on each commit. This is part of the
so-called “Continuous Integration” practice.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Added support for clang to the PGO (= profile-guided-optimizations)
scripts.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Moved away or deleted many scripts and other cruft.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Remove FCS_STATE_STORAGE_INDIRECT - it was old and slow and the hash lookup
or a balanced binary tree should be used instead.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Remove the experimental flipping support and made the default for cards
not to be flippable at all. (The code did not build with it enabled anyway.)</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Many small and large cleanups, optimizations and refactorings - hopefully
without breaking backward-compatibility.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_4_0_2_14_jan_2016">Version 4.0.2: (14-Jan-2016)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Correct tarball release - 4.0.1 should not be used.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_4_0_1_14_jan_2016">Version 4.0.1: (14-Jan-2016)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Fix the tests for the new Games-Solitaire-Verify (0.1601).</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Apply a patch from <a href="http://www.mageia.org/">Mageia</a> to prevent underlinking
during build. Thanks!</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Disable linking to the gperftools’ tcmalloc library if the test suite
is enabled due to <a href="https://github.com/gperftools/gperftools/issues/758" class="bare">https://github.com/gperftools/gperftools/issues/758</a> .</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_4_0_0_27_sep_2015">Version 4.0.0: (27-Sep-2015)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Integrate the scans of Tom Holroyd’s patsolve, for a faster atomic
moves-based solver. See the <code>--method patsolve</code>, <code>--patsolve-x-param</code>
and <code>--patsolve-y-param</code> options in the <code>USAGE.txt</code> file.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Add the <code>-dto2</code> / <code>--depth-tests-order2</code> flag to provide a corrected
version of the depth-tests-order feature without the depth string and comma
being prefixed to the tests order due to an oversight.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Convert the Python code (tests + board generation) to Python 3, because
it seems that Python 2 is going away. To run it, we require the "random2"
module from PyPI : <a href="https://pypi.python.org/pypi/random2" class="bare">https://pypi.python.org/pypi/random2</a> .</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Many small cleanups and optimisations.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Source tarball is now “.tar.xz”.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_3_26_0_19_may_2014">Version 3.26.0: (19-May-2014)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Remove the documents (e.g: <code>README</code>, <code>COPYING</code>, <code>AUTHORS</code>), which
have duplicates with a .txt extension from the source distribution, to save
space. They are still being copied to their location in the BINARY_DIR
where cmake is invoked from.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Fix a division/modulo by zero problem that yielded a floating-point
exception, as reported by the Mayhem team to the Debian bug tracker:
<a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=715914" class="bare">https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=715914</a> . Thanks!</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Fix <code>board_gen/pi-make-microsoft-freecell-board</code>
<code>board_gen/make-aisleriot-freecell-board</code> and<br/>
<code>board_gen/make-gnome-freecell-board</code> from crashing if only a single "-t"
flag is given. A crash was reported by the Mayhem team to the Debian
bug tracker: <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=716097" class="bare">https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=716097</a> . Thanks!</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Fix the automated tests, so they will support the new versions of
Games::Solitaire::Verify[<a href="http://fc-solve.shlomifish.org/verify-code/" class="bare">http://fc-solve.shlomifish.org/verify-code/</a>] .</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Remove <code>make_microsoft_freecell_board.c</code> - it is not useful and
<code>pi-make-microsoft-freecell-board</code> or <code>make_pysol_freecell_board.py</code> should
be used instead.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Fix the build process for version 4.9.x of the GCC compiler.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Add the pseudo-DFS solver in <code>pseudo_dfs_atomic_moves_solver.c</code> ,
which is another attempt at solving hard two freecell deals. It runs,
but generates a very large stack with the deal in question (MS #384243 ).</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The <code>summarize-fc-solve</code> script now accepts some game parameters followed
by a double-dash ("--"), followed by preset parameters for the solver.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Various fixes for warnings and errors for the build process, while using
CMake-3.0.0-rc3 (what will become CMake-3.0.0).</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Some cleanups, refactorings, modernisations, and minor optimisations.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_3_24_0_23_feb_2014">Version 3.24.0: (23-Feb-2014)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>This release is dedicated to the memory of Adrian Ettlinger (see
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Ettlinger" class="bare">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Ettlinger</a> ) who passed away on
23 October 2013, who was a good Internet friend of the primary maintainer of
Freecell Solver (= Shlomi Fish), and who contributed a great deal to Freecell
Solver and to Freecell research and programming in general (among other
life achievements, and contributions). You can find an obituary of
Mr. Ettlinger by Shlomi Fish here:
<a href="https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/fc-solve-discuss/conversations/messages/1379" class="bare">https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/fc-solve-discuss/conversations/messages/1379</a>
and the <code>video-editing</code> preset (see below) was named in honor of his previous
work in pioneering non-linear video editing.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Handle board/layout inputs without a trailing newline character on the last
line properly (thanks to someone who reported it via E-mail with respect to
the JavaScript-based solver).</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Add the <code>-l video-editing</code> or <code>-l ve</code> flare-based preset for shorter
solutions (on average).</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The distribution now contains the sources for the so-called
split-fcc-solver, which was originally conceived as an attempt to
determine whether the Windows Freecell deal No. 384,243 is solvable with
two freecells or not. The attempt failed because the split-FCC-solver
generated large intermediate outputs, but it may prove of some utility
in the future (while being experimental).</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_3_22_0_05_oct_2013">Version 3.22.0: (05-Oct-2013)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Made sure unknown options which have a prefix that is a recognised option
(e.g: <code>--resetjunk</code> vs. <code>--reset</code>), will be reported as such instead of
processed as the prefix automagically.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Fix the Win32 NSIS package, so it will build, run and process the presets.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The JavaScript-based solver now accepts arbitrary fc-solve command line
parameters, so it can solve any of the supported variants of Solitaire.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_3_20_1_01_jul_2013">Version 3.20.1: (01-Jul-2013)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Fix the build and silenced some warnings on MinGW/GCC/Win32.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_3_20_0_26_jun_2013">Version 3.20.0: (26-Jun-2013)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Major speedups to the Simple Simon code - including order of complexity
ones where a lookup is now O(1) instead of O(num_cards). The Simple Simon
code was in general heavily refactored and cleaned up.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Some bugs in the Simple Simon algorithms were fixed, slightly modifying
the outputted solutions.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Add missing BuildRequires to the RPM .spec .</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Add the <code>qualified-seed-improved</code> preset.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Fix the run-time display of the iteration count during
<code>pkill -USR1 fc-solve</code>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Some minor refactorings and optimisations.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_3_18_1_30_may_2013">Version 3.18.1: (30-May-2013)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Fix "make install" - there were some problems with the generation of
the man pages.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Fix the RPM .spec building.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_3_18_0_30_may_2013">Version 3.18.0: (30-May-2013)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Add a JavaScript port that uses Emscripten
( <a href="https://github.com/kripken/emscripten" class="bare">https://github.com/kripken/emscripten</a> ) to compile the C code into
JavaScript. See <code>Makefile.to-javascript.mak</code> and the contents of
The <code>/fc-solve/site/wml</code> directory of the repository.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Convert the CMake build system to the common <code>cmake/Shlomif_Common.cmake</code>
file, which will facilitate cross-project maintenance. It is included inside
the archive.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Added a <code>--help</code> flag for the summarize-fc-solve executable.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Got the test suite and the <code>dbm_fc_solver</code> and the <code>depth_dbm_fc_solver</code>
to run properly on 32-bit architectures.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The default rpm spec now runs the test suite.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Add <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Const-correctness">const</a> annotations and
moved declarations to where they are first assigned.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_3_16_0_30_nov_2012">Version 3.16.0: (30-Nov-2012)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Add the <code>-l micro-finance-improved</code> preset (or <code>-l mfi</code> for short),
which somewhat improves the length of the solutions of the <code>micro-finance</code>
preset.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Add the <code>--flares-choice</code> option, which determines how the winning flare
is chosen.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Add the <code>--flares-iters-factor</code> option (or <code>-fif</code> for short), which
specifies a factor to multiply the flares quotas.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Add the <code>-l qualified-seed</code> preset (or <code>-l qs</code> for short),
which somewhat improves the length of the solutions of the
<code>-l micro-finance-improved</code> preset.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The individual flares are now recycled and their memory is reused when
they are no longer needed. This is a RAM optimisation, which is applicable
only for flares-based presets.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_3_14_1_01_nov_2012">Version 3.14.1: (01-Nov-2012)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Fix the build on Windows with DWIM Perl and its Mingw32 (<code>strndup()</code>
was missing).</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_3_14_0_31_oct_2012">Version 3.14.0: (31-Oct-2012)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Got the tests to pass with <code>cmake -DFCS_WITHOUT_DEPTH_FIELD=1</code> by making
the library behave the same as without it. This also affected the behaviour of
<code>./fc-solve -l mo</code> with attempting to solve Baker’s Dozen deals.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>On UNIX platforms, <code>fc-solve</code> now exits gracefully with the message
“Iterations count exceeded.”, upon receiving a SIGABRT signal. Can be
triggered by executing <code>pkill -ABRT fc-solve</code>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The game states’ input routines now accept regular columns that start with
a leading colon (":"). As a result, one can input the states as output from
the solver with the <code>-p</code> and <code>-t</code> flags directly there.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Added a 6th BeFS weight (see the <code>-asw</code> flag) of the inverse of the number
of cards not above parents. Using
<code>./freecell-solver-range-parallel-solve 1 32000 1 -p -t -sam --method a-star -to 0123467589 -asw 1,0,0,0,0,1 -sp r:tf -mi 100000</code>
appears to be interesting.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Allow test groups inside the <code>-to</code> and <code>-dto</code> flags to be ordered using
the <code>=asw(…)</code> function and its parameters, based on the BeFS (Best-first
search) weights calculation.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Added the <code>-l amateur-star</code> (or <code>-l as</code> for short) preset, based on the
<code>=asw(…)</code> ordering that is the fastest preset yet.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Added the <code>-l micro-finance</code> (or <code>-l mf</code> for short) preset, based on the
6th BeFS weight.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Implement a Prune for games whose columns cannot be filled by any card
(such as Baker’s Dozen), where moving the last card on a column to a
different column is pointless. For more information, see
<a href="https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/fc-solve-discuss/conversations/topics/1121" class="bare">https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/fc-solve-discuss/conversations/topics/1121</a> .</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>In <code>dbm_fc_solver</code> and <code>depth_dbm_fc_solver</code>, implement the “DeBondt”
encoding method for Freecell and Baker’s Dozen, which allows for an even more
compact representation of the encoded states.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The libfreecell-solver code is now 64-bit-enabled and many of the limits
were converted to allow for 64-bit systems.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Dropped support for Microsoft Visual C++ (<code>CL.EXE</code>) and other compilers
that don&#8217;t support C99/gnu99.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Add <code>scripts/convert-dbm-fc-solver-solution-to-fc-solve-solution.pl</code>
to convert a solution output of the dbm_fc_solver to one compatible with
fc-solve.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_3_12_0_12_jun_2012">Version 3.12.0: (12-Jun-2012)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Add the <code>--show-exceeded-limits</code> / <code>-sel</code> flag that removes some ambiguity
in the output.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Fix invoking the solver with <code>--set-pruning r:tf</code> in conjunction
with <code>-opt</code>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Add the <code>-l three-eighty</code> preset.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Many <code>dbm_solver.c</code> improvements including the implementations of kaztree
and libavl2-derived backends, several major reductions of the memory
consumption, and many code cleanups and bug fixes.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Add support for building and testing the distribution in an out-of-tree
build (e.g:
<code>mkdir build ; cd build ; cmake -DFCS_WITH_SUITE=1 .. ; make ; make test</code>
).</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>A new experimental <code>fcc_solver.c</code> which aims to reduce memory consumption
in exhaustive scans even further.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Removed many #ifdefs from the code by creating common abstractions.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Eliminate many GCC warnings with certain GCC compile flags.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_3_10_0_15_jan_2012">Version 3.10.0: (15-Jan-2012)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Convert the references to the web-site and repository away from berlios.de,
as it was announced it will become offline.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Bug fix: correct the handling of foundations with values 0 (e.g: <code>H-0</code>,
<code>S-0</code> ).</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Bug fix: made the <code>-mi</code>/<code>--max-iters</code> flag global for all instances.
Previously, it affected only the last one.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Add an experimental <code>delta_states.c</code> implementation and
<code>dbm_solver.c</code> that uses it to drive a Freecell Solver scan with an on-disk
database (currently Google LevelDB and Berkeley DB are supported). So far
it seems that with a limited cache size, this does not scale too well.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Add the experimental <code>pruner-main.c</code> (not installed by default).</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Add support for generating "all_in_a_row" deals to
<code>make_pysol_freecll_board.py</code> .</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Many small optimizations and cleanups.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_3_8_0_01_jul_2011">Version 3.8.0: (01-Jul-2011)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Fix the crashes when using <code>--trim-max-stored-states</code>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Add a man page generated by AsciiDoc instead of the token man page
that was present previously.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The number of states in the collection is now preserved if the verdict
was unsolved.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Add a <code>--solutions-directory</code> argument to <code>test_multi_parallel.c</code> .</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Fix the rpm spec - <code>%{version}</code> instead of <code>%{PACKAGE_VERSION}</code> .</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Add <code>scripts/parallel-range-solver-total</code> to solve a range of deals in
parallel by splitting them into chunks.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Add <code>-DFCS_BUILD_DOCS=</code> to CMake to avoid building documentation.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Add a way to dump the valid outputs in
<code>t/t/lib/Games/Solitaire/FC_Solve/CheckResults.pm</code> to files.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Add an environment flag to filter out the valgrind test when running
<code>make test</code>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Many refactorings.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_3_6_0_01_feb_2011">Version 3.6.0: (01-Feb-2011)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Now installing the <code>fcs_dllexport.h</code> header file. It is needed for use
of libfreecell-solver in third-party programs, so previously including
<code>fcs_user.h</code> did not work.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Add the <code>--tracemem</code> compile-time option for tracing the amount of RAM
and time used by Freecell Solver as a function of the iterations count.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Bug fix for incrementally increasing the limits.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Add a modified version of kazlib&#8217;s balanced binary search tree to the
distribution so one will be available built-in. It can be used for both
the states' storage and for the --rcs LRU cache.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Revamped the various range solvers, while extracting common functionality
into header files, functions and macros.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Some relatively minor optimisations and code cleanups.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_3_4_0_05_dec_2010">Version 3.4.0: (05-Dec-2010)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Compiling without card flipping on by default now (finally it makes
the code a little faster instead of slower.)</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Added the <code>--set-pruning</code> / <code>-sp</code> flag to turn on pruning. This sets the
Horne play prune of moving cards that can no longer be used to build other
cards upon to the foundations.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>New preset <code>-l enlightened-ostrich</code> / <code>-l eo</code> based on it, which is
significantly faster than <code>-l foss-nessy</code>. Amadiro, who helped me with the
Black Hole Solitaire solver picked the name.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>New preset <code>-l maliciously-obscure</code> / <code>-l mo</code> for short solutions.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>There&#8217;s now an option to set a different hard-coded freecells' num at
compile-time.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Add an experimental flag of "--trim-max-stored-states". Currently may
crash the solver. (See the <code>Known_Bugs.txt</code> file).</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Added support for -fwhole-program and static linking the Freecell Solver
executables. This yielded another speed boost.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Forward ported the Google Dense Hash / Google Sparse Hash support for
the positions and columns.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Forward ported COMPACT_STATES.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Add the <code>--ms</code> / <code>-M</code> flags to <code>make_pysol_freecell_board.py</code> to generate
MS Deals even for the higher numbers (&gt; 32,000 which are not used for that in
PySol and PySol FC).</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Add a compile-time option to use RCS-like states storage:
<a href="http://fc-solve.shlomifish.org/to-do.html#rcs_state_storage" class="bare">http://fc-solve.shlomifish.org/to-do.html#rcs_state_storage</a> - this conserves
a lot of RAM.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Add a flag to get rid of visited_iter.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Add FCS_WITHOUT_DEPTH_FIELD to get rid of depth if fcs_state_extra_info_t.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Convert num_active_children to an unsigned short.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Forward ported the FCS_STATE_STORAGE_LIBAVL2_TREE to the new fc-solve and
the FCS_RCS_STATES. It seems to scale much better for FCS_RCS_STATES than
FCS_STATE_STORAGE_INTERNAL_HASH.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Converted the allocation of the BrFS queue items to alloc.{c,h} . This
wastes less memory.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Implement FCS_WITHOUT_LOCS_FIELDS . This removes the fc_locs / stack_locs
from the extra_info&#8217;s to conserve more space. It also makes solving faster.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Reduced the size of num_moves in move_stack_t.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Add support for the internal compact moves to the Tatzer script.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Added /trunk/fc-solve/scripts/automatic-build-for-982-2fc-solving/Makefile
which automatically builds and runs fc-solve for solving the two-freecell MS
deal No. 982.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Updated the cmake configuration to use lib${LIB_SUFFIX} so it can be
built on some 64-bit systems.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Many small optimisations.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_3_2_0_14_jul_2010">Version 3.2.0: (14-Jul-2010)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Add the <code>--depth-tests-order</code> (or <code>-dto</code> for short) flag that allows
varying the tests' order based on the depth. This gives way for interesting
(and faster) searches.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Add the <code>the-iglu-cabal</code> , <code>foss-nessy</code> and <code>tea-for-two</code> presets.
The latter is optimized for two freecell deals.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Fixed a bug where when specifying the <code>--max-iters</code> flag it did not
yield an <code>FCS_STATE_SUSPEND_PROCESS</code> return code.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Fix a crash when using a --prelude with a soft thread with a NULL name.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Add support for Google&#8217;s Dense Hash for the states' storage and the stacks
storage. It does not perform as well as our own custom hash.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Internals: defined a boolean data type <code>fcs_bool_t</code> with two constants
<code>TRUE</code> and <code>FALSE</code> , so it can be semantically different.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Some optimizations.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_3_0_0_23_may_2010">Version 3.0.0: (23-May-2010)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Implement the flares API (see <code>USAGE.txt</code>), which allows running several
alternative scans and then picking up the one with the shortest solution.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Add the <code>-l children-playing-ball</code> and <code>-l sentient-pearls</code> presets
that optimize on solution length (based on flares).</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Add <code>scripts/tag-fc-solve-release.bash</code> to tag using svn.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Updated the CMake version in the build-on-win32.pl script.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Add <code>scripts/stat-analysis-2.pl</code> which is a faster version of the
script for statistical analysis of the solution length.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Refactored the <code>split_cmd_line.c</code> module.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Renamed many "a_star" and "A*" occurrences in the code to "BeFS", because
what was thought to be the A* scan was actually Best-First-Search.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Convert the soft-DFS tests' order to a list-of-lists-of-tests, and no
longer recalculating the tests_list on any recycling.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_2_42_0_27_march_2010">Version 2.42.0: (27-March-2010)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Add the <code>-o</code> / <code>--output</code> flag to <code>fc-solve</code> to output to a file.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Now installing the new executables ( freecell-solver-fc-pro-range-solve ,
freecell-solver-multi-thread-solve , freecell-solver-range-parallel-solve ,
etc.) by default.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Bug fix: added a missing break after a case in cmd_line.c.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Fixed the Makefile&#8217;s "pdfs" target.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Converted many <code>char *</code> data types in the interface to
<code>freecell_solver_string_t</code>, which can be <code>const char *</code>. The default is
<code>const char *</code>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><code>pqueue.h</code> was converted to the MIT/Expat license, with the permission of
its author. Freecell Solver is now fully MIT/Expat.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Fixed a Best-First-Search recycling memory leak that was reported by
valgrind.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Bug fix: now continuing a solution if a is_a_complete_scan thread terminates
with the scans synergy set to <code>dead-end-marks</code>. This was done to avoid states
reported as falsely unsolvable such as MS 254,076 with <code>-l by</code>.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Added a forking range solver - not installed by default. See:
<a href="https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/fc-solve-discuss/conversations/topics/1038" class="bare">https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/fc-solve-discuss/conversations/topics/1038</a> . Sometimes
it yields somewhat better performance.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Disabled tcmalloc in debug mode because it messes things up.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Various internals cleanups and optimizations.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_2_40_0_27_jan_2010">Version 2.40.0: (27-Jan-2010)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>make_pysol_freecell_board.py now has support for "Black Hole" dealing. See:
<a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/projects/black-hole-solitaire-solver/" class="bare">http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/projects/black-hole-solitaire-solver/</a> .</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Added the "Scan:" header to indicate the current scan / soft-thread
when using the -s -i flags.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong>Security</strong>: Fixed a string overflow bug in <code>cmd_line.c</code> with the <code>-asw</code>
weights. As a result of this problem, Freecell Solver can write several NUL
characters (<em>\0</em>) to after the string specifying the command line argument.</p>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Now unspecified <code>-asw</code> are set to 0.</p>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<p>Fixed an off-by-1 iterations count report when a board was found to be
solvable.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>iter_handler is now applied globally across all instances.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Add the <code>-l blue-yonder</code> / <code>-l by</code> preset that is extra fast at solving
the Microsoft 32,00 based on running the optimization algorithm:</p>
<div class="paragraph">
<p><a href="https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/fc-solve-discuss/conversations/topics/1027" class="bare">https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/fc-solve-discuss/conversations/topics/1027</a> .</p>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<p>Added a compile-time option to reduce the size of the internal move token
structs. This may make memory consumption smaller, but definitely makes
Freecell Solver run slower, so it is off by default.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_2_38_0_29_dec_2009">Version 2.38.0: (29-Dec-2009)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Made sure that one can build Freecell Solver outside the source directory
without needing AsciiDoc. (That was a major build-system problem).</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Add a missing newline at the end of one of the lines of the help.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Add the "-F"/"--pysolfc" flag to board_gen/make_pysol_freecell_board.py
for generating PySolFC deals.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_2_36_0_27_nov_2009">Version 2.36.0: (27-Nov-2009)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Converted the <code>README</code> / <code>USAGE</code> / <code>NEWS</code> etc. files to
<a href="http://www.methods.co.nz/asciidoc/">AsciiDoc</a> . The sources are in .txt
and they are copied to their non-.txt files. The PDF build is still a bit
broken due to a strange CMake problem.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Simplified the test suite and benchmarking process. (Thanks to
<a href="http://pythack.com/">LECA Dimitri (Pythack)</a> for the inspiration).</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Many documents were otherwise enhanced with examples and other enhancements.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Inlined the hash comparison and several other functions in the code.
This made the code a little faster.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Clarified the documentation for broken versions of CMake (cmake-2.6.2)
like the one that ships with some versions of Ubuntu.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Fixed the tests for a valgrind regression.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_2_34_0_10_jul_2009">Version 2.34.0: (10-Jul-2009)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Added generation and installation of a libfreecell-solver.pc pkg-config
file.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Added the preset "toons-for-twenty-somethings".</p>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>It is an atomic moves preset that can solve the MS 32K deals.</p>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<p>Re-implemented the missing --next-instance/-ni flag.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Added the "-l the-last-mohican"/"-l tlm" theme for Simple Simon
that can solve more boards.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Now can rpmbuild -tb a tar.bz2.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Added information on running the test suite to the "HACKING" file.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Added a Python ctypes example under examples/ .</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Added support for Sun Studio to Makefile.gnu. the -fast flag yields worse
results than gcc.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Fixed some typos in the --help and the "USAGE" files.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Some internal changes:</p>
<div class="ulist">
<ul>
<li>
<p>The soft_thread structure now uses a union.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Added some tests to the command line-like argument splitting.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>fixed a minor bug with it.</p>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_2_32_1_25_jun_2009">Version 2.32.1: (25-Jun-2009)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Added a "#define BUILDING_DLL 1" so fcs_dllexport.h will work fine on
Microsoft Visual C++.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Normalised the DLLEXPORT modifiers.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Some fixes to the CMake build system:</p>
<div class="ulist">
<ul>
<li>
<p>CHECK_C_COMPILER_FLAG now uses a different variable for each flag,
since the variable was cached.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>tcmalloc is now truly optional.</p>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<p>Moved the declaration of the strncasecmp(a,b,c) macro for WIN32 systems
to before its first use.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>All of this was done to fix many build/compilation problems.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_2_32_0_24_jun_2009">Version 2.32.0: (24-Jun-2009)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Added meaningful heading comments to the *.c and *.h files where they
were absent.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Many small memory/speed optimisations.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Removed a lot of unnecessary code and merged a lot of code. Used:
scripts/find-ids.rb for finding uncommonly occurring identifiers.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Converted many macros to inline functions.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Now calculating the bit-width of the <em>int</em> data type in the CMake version.
There&#8217;s a fallback logic for it in config.h.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Extracted empty_two_cols_from_new_state() in freecell.c.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Restored the max_depth functionality. Currently not working very well.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Now supporting inline on non-GCC compilers using CMake.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Made many functions that were used only once or twice inline.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Added the --iters-update-on option to the threaded range solver.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Fixed some CMake bugs (especially wrong compiler flags to check).</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Optionally link with Google&#8217;s tcmalloc, which yields better performance
(especially for the multi-threaded solver).</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Added the support for DLLEXPORT to not export fc_solve_* from the DLL.
This reduces the size of the .so / .dll considerably.</p>
<div class="ulist">
<ul>
<li>
<p>Added -fvisibility=hidden to the build.</p>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<p>Got rid of using preset.c for FCS_FREECELL_ONLY.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_2_30_0_07_jun_2009">Version 2.30.0: (07-Jun-2009)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Added the presets "gooey-unknown-thing", "sand-stone" and "slick-rock"
to minimize the resultant solutions' length.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The Freecell Solver states storage and columns storage can now be
made to use any of the trees provided by libavl2
( <a href="http://www.stanford.edu/~blp/avl/" class="bare">http://www.stanford.edu/~blp/avl/</a> ) . The results seem to be somewhat
slower than libJudy and much slower than our own custom hash.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Fixed the auto-moves calculation in fc_pro_iface.c .</p>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>It was too pessimistic before, and had an off-by-one error. A card
can be automatically moved if all foundations of opposite color are -2
and the opposite foundation is -3.</p>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<p>Now one can exclude the Simple Simon-related move routines and logic from
the binaries during compilation. See "FCS_DISABLE_SIMPLE_SIMON" in the
CMake configuration.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Added scripts/measure-binaries-sizes.rb to measure the sizes of the binaries
in various configurations.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Merged Makefile.icc , Makefile.tendra , Makefile.tcc , Makefile.pcc
and Makefile.lcc into Makefile.gnu. Which compiler can be specified using
the Makefile.gnu COMPILER variable.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Added the threaded_range_solver "--worker-step $N" argument.</p>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>What is does is allow allocating uniform quotas to the different threads
to process. So far increasing the quotas from 1 to 16 does not seem to improve
the situation.</p>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<p>Fixed many warnings reported by the Intel C++ compiler (icc)</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Re-organized the code - renamed many files, moved declarations and
definitions to different files, and did a lot of overhaul.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Got rid of FCS_DEBUG_MOVES - it was never used and became obnoxious.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Added scripts/verify-simple-simon-range.pl and
scripts/simple-simon-stats-analysis.pl .</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Added a regression test for verifying the validity of a
Simple Simon solution.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Fixed Makefile.gnu to propagate CFLAGS to CREATE_SHARED.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Implemented FCS_WITHOUT_CARD_FLIPPING to exclude a lot of card flipping
code at build time. It is disabled by default because strangely it seems
to make the execution speed worse.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_2_28_1_18_may_2009">Version 2.28.1 (18-May-2009)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Added a fix to an off-by-one-error in alloc.h that caused a segfault
on x86-64. (Thanks to Ido Kanner).</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_2_28_0_17_may_2009">Version 2.28.0 (17-May-2009)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Several cleanups, refactoring and optimizations - especially to the
freecell.c file.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Converted more move functions to positions_by_rank.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Changed the hash function from Bob Jenkins&#8217;s to perl 5&#8217;s and inlined it.
These were substantial optimizations.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Unified many macros in state.h instead of having duplicate definitions
for every state type. Verified that the alternative state types (
COMPACT_STATES and DEBUG_STATES) build correctly.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Added the optional -Werror=implicit-function-declarations flag to the
compiler.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Added tests for some Simple Simon boards.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Created an fcs_cards_column_t type and converted the internals to use it.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Added the threaded range solver - freecell-solver-multi-thread-solve .
It performs better than the serial one on my machine.  It is built only if
pthreads (POSIX threads) is found.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Add the HACKING file with some information on benchmarking.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Renamed the configuration script to "Tatzer" so people who are used
to Autoconf&#8217;s "./configure ; make ; make install" won&#8217;t use it.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Got rid of all the max_num_$something in the dynamically-growing
arrays because num_$something is enough to tell where the limit is and grow it
if necessary. There&#8217;s now a lot of bit-fiddling logic to grow the
dynamically-growing arrays when necessary.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Added support for adding the gcc -fomit-frame-pointer and -march=$CPU_ARCH
flags.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Added the following makefiles for alternative Linux compilers:</p>
<div class="ulist">
<ul>
<li>
<p>Makefile.icc</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Makefile.tcc</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Makefile.tendra</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Makefile.lcc</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Makefile.pcc</p>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>So far only Intel&#8217;s icc and TenDRA produce working executables that
pass all the tests. The code had to be adapted to be compiled using TenDRA.</p>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<p>Added scripts/fcs-win32-create-package.pl that provides some guidance
in creating a package under Windows.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_2_26_0_27_apr_2009">Version 2.26.0 (27-Apr-2009)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Now Freecell Solver can be compiled with gcc-2.95 (again). It was needed
to test it with this old gcc version.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Some fixes to CMakeLists.txt.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>fcs_hash.c: now the secondary hash value calculation is optional
and should be enabled explicitly. Without it, Freecell Solver is faster:</p>
<div class="ulist">
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/fc-solve-discuss/conversations/topics/941" class="bare">https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/fc-solve-discuss/conversations/topics/941</a></p>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<p>Surgically removed fcs_hash.c&#8217;s "optimizing_for_cache" which made a small
speed improvement.</p>
<div class="ulist">
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/fc-solve-discuss/conversations/topics/942" class="bare">https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/fc-solve-discuss/conversations/topics/942</a></p>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<p>Made t/Makefile generated by CMake, so the tests can be run from the
packages source distribution. (Previously t/Makefile was excluded, and
since it was not generated, was not available).</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Eliminated BUILD_TYPE=release warnings.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Optimized fc_solve_sfs_move_freecell_cards_on_top_of_stacks() . This
involved a lot of refactoring and re-structuring of the internals. Now
Freecell Solver is significantly faster.</p>
<div class="ulist">
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/fc-solve-discuss/conversations/topics/943" class="bare">https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/fc-solve-discuss/conversations/topics/943</a></p>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<p>Fixed the testing targets and the building of the rpm from the tar.gz
archive.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_2_24_0_18_apr_2009">Version 2.24.0 (18-Apr-2009)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Many code cleanups and internal changes. Reduced the size of the library
considerably.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Added Makefile.llvm to build LLVM bitcodes from the Freecell Solver
sources. So far, they seem significantly slower than the native code compiled
using gcc-4.3.2.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Implemented "cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=profile" . Can be activated using
"./configure --profile"</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Now build (but not installing) freecell-solver-fc-pro-range-solve , which
runs a range of MS-Freecell / Freecell Pro boards using the solver and outputs
the number of FCS moves, the number of FC-Pro moves, and the FC-Pro moves
in standard notation.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Fixed some bugs (crashes, leaks, etc.) when running -opt on a range
of boards (or recycling instances with -opt in general).</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Some CMake / Build system cleanups and improvements. Among them, trimmed
the distribution from unnecessary files.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_2_22_0_31_mar_2009">Version 2.22.0 (31-Mar-2009)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Various improvements to the CMake build process:</p>
<div class="ulist">
<ul>
<li>
<p>Updated freecell-solver-config</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Fixed the building if build from a different directory.
(e.g: mkdir build ; cd build ; cmake ..)</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Now also building a static library by default. There&#8217;s a cmake option
to trigger it off.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Thanks to RISKO Gergely (the maintainer of the Freecell Solver Debian
package) for a contributed patch.</p>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<p>Fixed the rpmbuild -tb process on Mandriva Linux Cooker (and
possibly other systems).</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Removed some old, unnecessary and/or no-longer-working files.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Converted the package from the Public Domain to the MIT/Expat Licence
( <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_License" class="bare">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_License</a> ). This change was done due to
the many problems with licensing source code under the public domain:</p>
<div class="ulist">
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Licensing_and_Law/public-domain.html" class="bare">http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Licensing_and_Law/public-domain.html</a></p>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_2_20_0_26_mar_2009">Version 2.20.0 (26-Mar-2009)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Updated the "NEWS" file (this file) with all the previous versions up
to 0.4 (the first release after the first initial release).</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Many fixes to the Win32 NSIS Package creation process of CMake/CPack .
The NSIS package is now built and installed properly.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Fixed a bug with the recycling logic of the optimization thread.</p>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>This influenced "freecell-solver-range-parallel-solve 1 2 1 -opt" among other
things. In the process, I refactored the code a bit after trying to follow
some false leads.</p>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<p>Fixed the --prefix flag in ./configure to be treated as a string instead
of a boolean.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Fixed the running of the executables under a specified PREFIX
( <a href="http://www.cmake.org/Wiki/CMake_RPATH_handling" class="bare">http://www.cmake.org/Wiki/CMake_RPATH_handling</a> )</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Minor changes to "README", "INSTALL" and "USAGE".</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_2_18_0_19_mar_2009">Version 2.18.0 (19-Mar-2009)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Added the FCS_FREECELL_ONLY compile-time flag to hard-code the settings
for Freecell and thus allow faster run-time. On a Pentium 4-2.4GHz machine
running Mandriva Linux Cooker, this allows one to solve the Microsoft 32,000 in
194.56353 seconds ( 164 deals / second ) instead of
228.84 seconds for the generic version ( 140 deals / second ).</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Fixed using libredblack ( <a href="http://libredblack.sourceforge.net/" class="bare">http://libredblack.sourceforge.net/</a> ) for states
and stacks storage. (Compile-time options)</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Added an option to use libJudy ( <a href="http://judy.sourceforge.net/" class="bare">http://judy.sourceforge.net/</a> ) for states
and stacks storage. Yields better performance than libredblack, but worse
than the internal hash.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Added the -Wall by default for gcc in CMake.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Added the boards target to generate 24.board and 1941.board.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Updated the TODO file.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Added previous NEWS items for previous versions (in this file).</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Now documenting the --version flag in USAGE.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Added an experimental ./configure convenience script (written in
Perl) to run CMake using some configuration options. NOTE: Please don&#8217;t
use it to build packages.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Added "scripts/time-fcs.pl" to help time a
freecell-solver-range-parallel-solve dump.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Got rid of the hard_dfs() scan. It is still accepted as an argument, but
is now using the soft_dfs() routines instead.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Many internal refactorings, cleanups tweaks and fine-tunings.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Moved away change_ver.sh to scripts/old/change_ver.sh - it does not
seem to be used any longer.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_2_16_0_15_mar_2009">Version 2.16.0 (15-Mar-2009)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Made sure the indexes of the iterations when the "-s -i" flags are specified
are consecutive. Previously, they were much more inconsistent.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>(Internals) Split ptr_state_with_locations_t into ptr_state_t (the key)
and ptr_state_extra_info_t (the value). Not all code inside the #ifdef&#8217;s
(like the libavl / libredblack code) was ported to use it instead.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_2_14_0_25_jan_2009">Version 2.14.0 (25-Jan-2009)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Fixed the compilation with profiling information in Makefile.gnu (should be
of concern only to developers).</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Optimized move_stack_cards_to_different_stacks, yielding a substantial
speed increase.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Converted the identifiers from starting with freecell_solver_ to
starting with fc_solve_ , which is shorter and saner.</p>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>freecell_solver_user_ is still used in the API in order to not break
compatibility.</p>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<p>Made sure the effect of the "--sequence-move unlimited" option is not
dependent on other options, so the sequence move will always be unlimited.
(Thanks to larrysan for reporting this bug).</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Fixed run-tests.pl (and as a result also ctest -V and make test) to
run properly after a raw unpacking.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_2_12_0_10_dec_2008">Version 2.12.0 (10-Dec-2008)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>A New Configuration and build system based on CMake
( <a href="http://www.cmake.org/" class="bare">http://www.cmake.org/</a> ) which results in faster configurations
and builds, and a much reduced archive size.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>There&#8217;s a new suite of automated tests. See the file README for details
how to run them.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>There&#8217;s a new --version flag that prints the version of the library.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>A speed optimization to the command line processing based on a radix-tree.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Many bug-fixes since 2.8.0. (Released as 2.8.x).</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_2_8_0_28_sep_2002">Version 2.8.0 (28-Sep-2002)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Better documentation and help screens. See:</p>
<div class="paragraph">
<p><a href="http://freshmeat.net/articles/time-to-rethink-your-help-flag" class="bare">http://freshmeat.net/articles/time-to-rethink-your-help-flag</a></p>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<p>A preset system - see the "-l" flag in USAGE.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>An option to read parameters from files. See "--read-from-file" in USAGE.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Finally, it is now possible to run one instance of the solver after the
other in case the other one has returned a negative verdict. This is useful
for example to run an atomic moves preset after a meta-moves one, as the
latter cannot guarantee an accurate false verdict.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_2_6_0_12_jul_2002">Version 2.6.0 (12-Jul-2002)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Atomic moves and some atomic moves presets have been added. Solving
using atomic moves guarantees that there will be no false negatives, but
is slower than the Meta-moves-based presets. (At least for now). It also
yields less interesting solutions.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>There is now a "--prelude" switch (see USAGE) that allows running a
static order of quotas at the beginning of the scan for the participating
soft threads. It makes constructing faster solving presets easier, especially
after utilising this code:</p>
<div class="paragraph">
<p><a href="http://code.google.com/p/fc-solve/source/browse/#svn%2Ffc-solve%2Ftrunk%2Ffc-solve%2Fpresets" class="bare">http://code.google.com/p/fc-solve/source/browse/#svn%2Ffc-solve%2Ftrunk%2Ffc-solve%2Fpresets</a></p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Also see the "--st-name" option.</p>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<p>The PySol "Fan" game preset was added to make_pysol_freecell_board.py and
to Freecell Solver itself. Note that the game is played with 18
columns/stacks , so Freecell Solver will usually need to be recompiled.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Several other command line options:</p>
<div class="ulist">
<ul>
<li>
<p>"--reparent-states"</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>"--calc-real-depth"</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>"--optimization-tests-order"</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>"--scans-synergy"</p>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>See the "USAGE" file for more information.</p>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<p>The internal code has undergone several speed boosts that made Freecell
Solver much faster. Now the INDIRECT_STACK_STATES is a bit faster than
COMPACT_STATES.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Updated the TODO list.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_2_4_0_29_mar_2002">Version 2.4.0 (29-Mar-2002)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Now several scans are to operate on the same states' collection. This is
done using a mechanism called "soft threads", which is switched in user-land
and does not require system multi-threading. In the file "USAGE" see:</p>
<div class="ulist">
<ul>
<li>
<p>"-nst"  / "--next-soft-thread"</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>"-nht"  / "--next-hard-thread"</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>"-step" / "--soft-thread-step"</p>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<p>fcs_cl.h was included in the RPM .spec.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_2_2_0_18_feb_2002">Version 2.2.0 (18-Feb-2002)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Freecell Solver&#8217;s version is now kept in the file ver.txt</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Added manual pages symbolic links for the following command-line board
generators:</p>
<div class="ulist">
<ul>
<li>
<p>make-gnome-freecell-board</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>make_pysol_freecell_board.py</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>make-aisleriot-freecell-board</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>pi-make-microsoft-freecell-board</p>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<p>Moved more declarations of functions to header files (ending with .h)</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Added some compiler-optional inline annotations for functions.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The identifiers of the library are now all residing under freecell_solver_</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>New flag:</p>
<div class="ulist">
<ul>
<li>
<p>"--max-stored-states"</p>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<p>The package can now be built as an RPM for Red Hat Linux and compatible
systems by running rpmbuild -ta on the archive.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Several speed-ups.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_2_0_0_19_dec_2001">Version 2.0.0 (19-Dec-2001)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Added some presets for the PySol games "Beleaguered Castle", "Citadel"
and "Streets and Alleys".</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Re-factoring of the scans code to make it simpler.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Added many functions to the external API.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>fc-solve now uses it, so it is fully loosely-coupled with the library
it is linked against.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Added a randomized DFS scan (with a user-defined seed).</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Win32 Makefile can now generate a working DLL.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_1_10_0_02_oct_2001">Version 1.10.0 (02-Oct-2001)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Added support for solving deals of "Simple Simon" in addition to
all the freecell-like variants that it could solve before.</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_1_8_0_31_aug_2001">Version 1.8.0 (31-Aug-2001)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>A new build and configuration process based on the GNU Autotools (Autoconf,
Automake and libtool). This allows portably build shared and static libraries
and stuff like that.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The GNOME AisleRiot board-generation program can generate the boards of
the more Solitaire variants which are supported by Freecell Solver.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_1_6_0_11_apr_2001">Version 1.6.0 (11-Apr-2001)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Freecell Solver now has a solution optimization scan. Check it out
by adding the "-opt" flag.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Many comments were added to the code, and you are welcome to go over
it and see if you understand everything that goes on there. If you don&#8217;t,
contact me and I&#8217;ll add some more comments.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Several speed optimizations were done in the internal hash, so I think
it should run at least a little faster.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_1_4_0_07_feb_2001">Version 1.4.0 (07-Feb-2001)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Many fixes for bugs and memory leaks.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>A Soft-DFS scan - Depth-First Search that does not use procedural recursion
was introduced.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>A New Best-first Search Scan (called A* in the code and documentation) was
introduced.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>A New Breadth-First-Search (BFS or BrFS) scan was introduced. It&#8217;s not
very practical.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>The choice between all those scans can be specified at run-time using
command-line arguments.</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_1_2_0_21_dec_2000">Version 1.2.0 (21-Dec-2000)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Several moves were improved or added, so it can solve more layouts.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>A more robust command-line argument handling, so less segfaults can be
expected if it&#8217;s improperly used.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_1_0_0_19_nov_2000">Version 1.0.0 (19-Nov-2000)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Added support for solving more game types.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Can be compiled so it will be less memory intensive (INDIRECT_STACK_STATES).</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>There&#8217;s an API for use by third-party developers. It supports
suspending a solution process and resuming it from its last position.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Several random bug-fixes.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_0_10_0_09_oct_2000">Version 0.10.0 (09-Oct-2000)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Support was added for several Solitaire variants besides Freecell, such as
Forecell, Seahaven Towers and Eight Off.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>It now can emits the moves themselves, instead of just the intermediate
solutions.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Several bug-fixes.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_0_8_0_28_aug_2000">Version 0.8.0 (28-Aug-2000)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Some bug-fixes.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Support for a variable number of freecells, columns, and cards per column.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Board generators for Microsoft Freecell, Freecell Pro and PySol.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>An option to use the balanced binary tree implementations of libavl
( <a href="http://adtinfo.org/" class="bare">http://adtinfo.org/</a> ), glib ( <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLib" class="bare">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLib</a> ), or
libredblack ( <a href="http://libredblack.sourceforge.net/" class="bare">http://libredblack.sourceforge.net/</a> ). Using them makes
Freecell Solver about 33% faster.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Support for using "T" instead of "10" in board input/output.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Improved Documentation.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_0_6_28_jul_2000">Version 0.6 (28-Jul-2000)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>An extra movement that allows Freecell Solver to solve some boards which
it could not solve previously.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The order of the stacks and freecells is preserved throughout the
solutions.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>There is now an option to limit to a certain number of iterations (so
Freecell Solver will stop before it consumes too much memory)</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Specify the order of the moves that will be tested. Usually, a test
order can be found that will solve a given board really quickly.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="news_version_0_4_06_jun_2000">Version 0.4 (06-Jun-2000)</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="olist arabic">
<ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>Three major code optimizations. Freecell Solver now runs much faster.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Freecell Solver is now able to start solving from a non-initial board.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div id="footer">
<div id="footer-text">
Last updated 2018-10-27 19:35:04 IDT
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>