Release Notes for CVC4 1.4, July 2014 ** Getting started If you run CVC4 without arguments, you will find yourself in an interactive CVC4 session, which expects commands in CVC4's native language (the so-called "presentation" language). To use SMT-LIB, use the "--lang smt" option on the command line. For stricter adherence to the standard, use "--smtlib-strict" (see below regarding SMT-LIB compliance). When a filename is given on the command line, the file's extension determines the language parser that's used (e.g., file.smt is SMT-LIB 1.2, file.smt2 is SMT-LIB 2.0, and file.cvc is the presentation language). To override this, you can use the --lang option. ** Type correctness The CVC family of systems relies on Type Correctness Conditions (TCCs) when mixing two types that have a compatible base type. TCCs, and the checking of such, are not supported by CVC4 1.4. This is an issue when mixing integers and reals. A function defined only on integers can be applied to REAL (as INT is a subtype of REAL), and CVC4 will not complain. It is up to the user to ensure that the REAL expression must be an integer. If the REAL expression is not an integer and is used where an INT is expected, CVC4 may produce strange results. For example: f : INT -> INT; ASSERT f(1/3) = 0; ASSERT f(2/3) = 1; CHECKSAT; % sat COUNTEREXAMPLE; % f : (INT) -> INT = LAMBDA(x1:INT) : 0; This kind of problem can be identified by checking TCCs. Though CVC4 does not (yet) support TCCs, CVC3 can be used to produce TCCs for this input (with the +dump-tcc option). The TCC can then be checked by CVC4 or another solver. (CVC3 can also check TCCs at the same time it creates them, with +tcc.) ** Changes in CVC's Presentation Language The native language of all solvers in the CVC family, referred to as the "presentation language," has undergone some revisions for CVC4. The most notable is that CVC4 does _not_ add counterexample assertions to the current assertion set after a SAT/INVALID result. For example: x, y : INT; ASSERT x = 1 OR x = 2; ASSERT y = 1 OR y = 2; ASSERT x /= y; CHECKSAT; % sat QUERY x = 1; % invalid QUERY x = 2; % invalid Here, CVC4 responds "invalid" to the second and third queries, because each has a counterexample (x=2 is a counterexample to the first, and x=1 is a counterexample to the second). However, CVC3 will respond with "valid" to one of these two, as the first query (the CHECKSAT) had the side-effect of locking CVC3 into one of the two cases; the later queries are effectively querying the counterexample that was found by the first. CVC4 removes this side-effect of the CHECKSAT and QUERY commands. CVC4 supports rational literals (of type REAL) in decimal; CVC3 did not support decimals. CVC4 does not have support for predicate subtypes, although these are planned for future releases. ** SMT-LIB compliance Every effort has been made to make CVC4 compliant with the SMT-LIB 2.0 standard (http://smtlib.org/). However, when parsing SMT-LIB input, certain default settings don't match what is stated in the official standard. To make CVC4 adhere more strictly to the standard, use the "--smtlib-strict" command-line option. Even with this setting, CVC4 is somewhat lenient; some non-conforming input may still be parsed and processed. For the latest news on SMT-LIB compliance, please check: http://cvc4.cs.nyu.edu/wiki/SMT-LIB_Compliance ** Getting statistics Statistics can be dumped on exit (both normal and abnormal exits) with the --stats command line option. ** Time and resource limits CVC4 can be made to self-timeout after a given number of milliseconds. Use the --tlimit command line option to limit the entire run of CVC4, or use --tlimit-per to limit each individual query separately. Preprocessing time is not counted by the time limit, so for some large inputs which require aggressive preprocessing, you may notice that --tlimit does not work very well. If you suspect this might be the case, you can use "-vv" (double verbosity) to see what CVC4 is doing. Time-limited runs are not deterministic; two consecutive runs with the same time limit might produce different results (i.e., one may time out and respond with "unknown", while the other completes and provides an answer). To ensure that results are reproducible, use --rlimit or --rlimit-per. These options take a "resource count" (presently, based on the number of SAT conflicts) that limits the search time. A word of caution, though: there is no guarantee that runs of different versions of CVC4 or of different builds of CVC4 (e.g., two CVC4 binaries with different features enabled, or for different architectures) will interpret the resource count in the same manner. CVC4 does not presently have a way to limit its memory use; you may opt to run it from a shell after using "ulimit" to limit the size of the heap. ** Proof support CVC4 1.4 has limited support for proofs, and they are disabled by default. (Run the configure script with --enable-proof to enable proofs). Proofs are exported in LFSC format and are limited to the propositional backbone of the discovered proof (theory lemmas are stated without proof in this release). ** Nonlinear arithmetic CVC4 1.4 has a state-of-the-art linear arithmetic solver. However, there is extremely limited support for nonlinear arithmetic in this release. ** Portfolio solving If enabled at configure-time (./configure --with-portfolio), a second CVC4 binary will be produced ("pcvc4"). This binary has support for running multiple instances of CVC4 in different threads. Use --threads=N to specify the number of threads, and use --thread0="options for thread 0" --thread1="options for thread 1", etc., to specify a configuration for the threads. Lemmas are *not* shared between the threads by default; to adjust this, use the --filter-lemma-length=N option to share lemmas of N literals (or smaller). (Some lemmas are ineligible for sharing because they include literals that are "local" to one thread.) Currently, the portfolio **does not work** with the theory of inductive datatypes. This limitation will be addressed in a future release. ** Questions ?? CVC4 and its predecessors have an active user base. You might want to subscribe to the mailing list (http://cs.nyu.edu/mailman/listinfo/cvc-users) and post a question there. ** Reporting bugs and making feature requests CVC4 is under active development. Should you find a bug in CVC4's documentation, behavior, API, or SMT-LIB compliance, or if you have a feature request, please let us know on our bugtracker at http://cvc4.cs.nyu.edu/bugs/ or send an email to cvc-bugs@cims.nyu.edu.