Add readme file

README.md

@@ -0,0 +1,51 @@
+# Restart Based Meta-Search Experiments
+
+This repository contains benchmarks of restart based meta-search presented in
+
+> Dekker J.J., de la Banda M.G., Schutt A., Stuckey P.J., Tack G. (2018) Solver-Independent Large Neighbourhood Search. In: Hooker J. (eds) Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming. CP 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 11008. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98334-9_6
+
+and included in Jip J. Dekker's PhD Thesis.
+
+These experiments concern the usage of propagation engine adjustments that capture some of the context of the current search space.
+This context can later be accessed by special propagators to enforce properties that are interesting for meta-search.
+Such as:
+
+- The last value a variable has taken
+- The last solution a variable has taken
+- A random value, to be assigned by a variable
+
+These benchmarks tests the effectiveness of this approach.
+The experiments are conducted on the `gbac`, `rcpsp-wet` and `steelmillslab` problems from the MiniZinc challenge.
+Each model is given two neighbourhoods for an round-robin LNS approach.
+
+## Setup
+
+The script `setup.sh` contains initial configuration of the experiments:
+
+- The amount of time given for the test (120 sec)
+- The amount of repeats for randomised search (10)
+- It adds the correect version of MiniZinc to the `PATH`
+
+The solver versions used are stored in the `software/` folder as git sub-modules.
+The `install.sh` script can be used to compile the solvers and put them in the correct place.
+
+## Run
+
+The experiments can be run as different parts:
+
+- Regular Gecode (base-line)
+- Regular Chuffed (base-line)
+- Restart Based Gecode (proposal)
+- Restart Based Chuffed (proposal)
+- Recording Gecode (data for replay)
+- Replaying Gecode (ideal-case, no-computation)
+
+For each part there is a `run_*.sh` script that will run the experiments and put its results into the `output` folder.
+The `run_all.sh` script can be used to run them all in sequences.
+
+## Analyse
+
+The scripts `analyse_{gecode,chuffed}.py` can be used to process the information gathered during the experiments.
+Each script is specific to that solver.
+It takes the output folder of one of the runs as an argument (e.g., `output/gecode/gbac/original`).
+The script produces a CSV format that can then be processed using software like Excel or Numbers.