~ubuntu-branches/ubuntu/natty/freecell-solver/natty

Freecell Solver's News File
===========================
Shlomi Fish <shlomif@cpan.org>
:Date: 2009-09-05
:Revision: $Id: NEWS.txt 3314 2010-12-05 21:25:31Z shlomif $

Version 3.4.0: (05-Dec-2010)
----------------------------

1. Compiling without card flipping on by default now (finally it makes
the code a little faster instead of slower.)

2. Added the +--set-pruning+ / +-sp+ 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.

3. New preset +-l enlightened-ostrich+ / +-l eo+ based on it, which is
significantly faster than +-l foss-nessy+. Amadiro, who helped me with the
Black Hole Solitaire solver picked the name.

4. New preset +-l maliciously-obscure+ / +-l mo+ for short solutions.

5. There's now an option to set a different hard-coded freecells' num at
compile-time.

6. Add an experimental flag of "--trim-max-stored-states". Currently may
crash the solver. (See the +Known_Bugs.txt+ file).

7. Added support for -fwhole-program and static linking the Freecell Solver
executables. This yielded another speed boost.

8. Forward ported hte Google Dense Hash / Google Sparse Hash support for
the positions and columns.

9. Forward ported COMPACT_STATES.

10. Add the +--ms+ / +-M+ flags to +make_pysol_freecell_board.py+ to generate 
MS Deals even for the higher numbers (> 32,000 which are not used for that in
PySol and PySol FC).

11. Add a compile-time option to use RCS-like states storage:
http://fc-solve.berlios.de/to-do.html#rcs_state_storage - this conserves
a lot of RAM.

12. Add a flag to get rid of visited_iter.

13. Add FCS_WITHOUT_DEPTH_FIELD to get rid of depth if fcs_state_extra_info_t.

14. Convert num_active_children to an unsigned short.

15. 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.

16. Converted the allocation of the BrFS queue items to alloc.{c,h} . This
wastes less memory.

17. Implement FCS_WITHOUT_LOCS_FIELDS . This removes the fc_locs / stack_locs
from the extra_info's to conserve more space. It also makes solving faster.

18. Reduced the size of num_moves in move_stack_t.

19. Add support for the internal compact moves to the Tatzer script.

20. 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.

21. Updated the cmake configuration to use lib${LIB_SUFFIX} so it can be
built on some 64-bit systems.

22. Many small optimisations.

Version 3.2.0: (14-Jul-2010)
----------------------------

1. Add the +--depth-tests-order+ (or +-dto+ for short) flag that allows
varying the tests' order based on the depth. This allows for interesting
(and faster) searches.

2. Add the +the-iglu-cabal+ , +foss-nessy+ and +tea-for-two+ presets.
The latter is optimized for two freecell deals.

3. Fixed a bug where when specifying the +--max-iters+ flag it did not
yield an +FCS_STATE_SUSPEND_PROCESS+ return code.

4. Fix a crash when using a --prelude with a soft thread with a NULL name.

5. Add support for Google's Dense Hash for the states' storage and the stacks
storage. It does not perform as well as our own custom hash.

6. Internals: defined a boolean data type +fcs_bool_t+ with two constants
+TRUE+ and +FALSE+ , so it can be semantically different.

7. Some optimizations.

Version 3.0.0: (23-May-2010)
----------------------------

1. Implement the flares API (see +USAGE.txt+), which allows running several
alternative scans and then picking up the one with the shortest solution.

2. Add the +-l children-playing-ball+ and +-l sentient-pearls+ presets
that optimize on solution length (based on flares).

3. Add +scripts/tag-fc-solve-release.bash+ to tag using svn.

4. Updated the CMake version in the build-on-win32.pl scritp.

5. Add +scripts/stat-analysis-2.pl+ which is a faster version of the
script for statistical analysis of the solution length.

6. Refactored the +split_cmd_line.c+ module.

7. Renamed many "a_star" and "A*" occurences in the code to "BeFS", because
what was thought to be the A* scan was actually Best-First-Search.

8. Convert the soft-DFS tests' order to a list-of-lists-of-tests, and no
longer recalculating the tests_list on any recycling.

Version 2.42.0: (27-March-2010)
-------------------------------

1. Add the +-o+ / +--output+ flag to +fc-solve+ to output to a file.

2. Now installing the new executables ( freecell-solver-fc-pro-range-solve , 
freecell-solver-multi-thread-solve , freecell-solver-range-parallel-solve , 
etc.) by default.

3. Bug fix: added a missing break after a case in cmd_line.c.

4. Fixed the Makefile's "pdfs" target.

5. Converted many +char *+ data types in the interface to 
+freecell_solver_string_t+, which can be +const char *+. The default is
+const char *+.

6. +pqueue.h+ was converted to the MIT/X11 license, with the permission of its
author. Freecell Solver is now fullly MIT/X11.

7. Fixed a Best-First-Search recycling memory leak that was reported by 
valgrind.

8. Bug fix: now continuing a solution if a is_a_complete_scan thread terminates 
with the scans synergy set to +dead-end-marks+. This was done to avoid states 
reported as falsely unsolvable such as MS 254,076 with +-l by+. 

9. Added a forking range solver - not installed by default. See:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/fc-solve-discuss/message/1038 . Sometimes
it yields somewhat better performance.

10. Disabled tcmalloc in debug mode because it messes things up.

11. Various internals cleanups and optimizations.

Version 2.40.0: (27-Jan-2010)
-----------------------------

1. make_pysol_freecell_board.py now has support for "Black Hole" dealing. See:
http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/projects/black-hole-solitaire-solver/ .

2. Added the "Scan:" header to indicate the current scan / soft-thread 
when using the -s -i flags.

3. *Security*: Fixed a string overflow bug in +cmd_line.c+ with the +-asw+
weights. As a result of this problem, Freecell Solver can write several NUL
characters ('\0') to after the string specifying the command line argument.
+
Now unspecified +-asw+ are set to 0.

4. Fixed an off-by-1 iterations count report when a board was found to be 
solvable.

5. iter_handler is now applied globally across all instances.

6. Add the +-l blue-yonder+ / +-l by+ preset that is extra fast at solving
the Microsoft 32,00 based on running the optimization algorithm:
+
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/fc-solve-discuss/message/1027 .

7. 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.

Version 2.38.0: (29-Dec-2009)
-----------------------------

1. Made sure that one can build Freecell Solver outside the source directory
without needing AsciiDoc. (That was a major build-sytem problem).

2. Add a missing newline at the end of one of the lines of the help.

3. Add the "-F"/"--pysolfc" flag to board_gen/make_pysol_freecell_board.py
for generating PySolFC deals.

Version 2.36.0: (27-Nov-2009)
-----------------------------

1. Converted the +README+ / +USAGE+ / +NEWS+ etc. files to 
http://www.methods.co.nz/asciidoc/[AsciiDoc] . 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.

2. Simplified the test suite and benchmarking process. (Thanks to
http://pythack.com/[LECA Dimitri (Pythack)] for the inspiration).

3. Many documents were otherwise enhanced with examples and other enhancements.

4. Inlined the hash comparison and several other functions in the code.
This made the code a little faster.

5. Clarified the documentation for broken versions of CMake (cmake-2.6.2)
like the one that ships with some versions of Ubuntu.

6. Fixed the tests for a valgrind regression.

Version 2.34.0: (10-Jul-2009)
-----------------------------

1. Added generation and installation of a libfreecell-solver.pc pkg-config
file.

2. Added the preset "toons-for-twenty-somethings".
+
It is an atomic moves preset that can solve the MS 32K deals.

3. Re-implemented the missing --next-instance/-ni flag.

4. Added the "-l the-last-mohican"/"-l tlm" theme for Simple Simon
that can solve more boards.

5. Now can rpmbuild -tb a tar.bz2.

6. Added information on running the test suite to the "HACKING" file.

7. Added a Python ctypes example under examples/ .

8. Added support for Sun Studio to Makefile.gnu. the -fast flag yields worse
results than gcc.

9. Fixed some typos in the --help and the "USAGE" files.

10. Some internal changes:
    - The soft_thread structure now uses a union.
    - Added some tests to the command line-like argument splitting.
        - fixed a minor bug with it.


Version 2.32.1: (25-Jun-2009)
-----------------------------

1. Added a "#define BUILDING_DLL 1" so fcs_dllexport.h will work fine on
Microsoft Visual C++.

2. Normalised the DLLEXPORT modifiers.

3. Some fixes to the CMake build system: 
    - CHECK_C_COMPILER_FLAG now uses a different variable for each flag,
    since the variable was cached.
    - tcmalloc is now truly optional.

4. Moved the declaration of the strncasecmp(a,b,c) macro for WIN32 systems
to before its first use.

5. All of this was done to fix many build/compilation problems.

Version 2.32.0: (24-Jun-2009)
-----------------------------

1. Added meaningful heading comments to the *.c and *.h files where they
were absent.

2. Many small memory/speed optimisations.

3. Removed a lot of unnecessary code and merged a lot of code. Used:
scripts/find-ids.rb for finding uncommonly occuring identifiers.

4. Converted many macros to inline functions.

5. Now calculating the bit-width of the 'int' data type in the CMake version. 
There's a fallback logic for it in config.h.

6. Extracted empty_two_cols_from_new_state() in freecell.c.

7. Restored the max_depth functionality. Currently not working very well.

8. Now supporting inline on non-GCC compilers using CMake.

9. Made many functions that were used only once or twice inline.

10. Added the --iters-update-on option to the threaded range solver.

11. Fixed some CMake bugs (especially wrong compiler flags to check).

12. Optionally link with Google's tcmalloc, which yields better performance
(especially for the multi-threaded solver).

13. Added the support for DLLEXPORT to not export fc_solve_* from the DLL.
This reduces the size of the .so / .dll considerably.
    
    - Added -fvisibility=hidden to the build.

14. Got rid of using preset.c for FCS_FREECELL_ONLY.

Version 2.30.0: (07-Jun-2009)
-----------------------------

1. Added the presets "gooey-unknown-thing", "sand-stone" and "slick-rock"
to minimize the resultant solutions' length.

2. The Freecell Solver states storage and columns storage can now be
made to use any of the trees provided by libavl2 
( http://www.stanford.edu/~blp/avl/ ) . The results seem to be somewhat
slower than libJudy and much slower than our own custom hash.

3. Fixed the auto-moves calculation in fc_pro_iface.c .
+
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.

4. 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.

5. Added scripts/measure-binaries-sizes.rb to measure the sizes of the binaries
in various configurations.

6. 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.

7. Added the threaded_range_solver "--worker-step $N" argument.
+
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.

8. Fixed many warnings reported by the Intel C++ compiler (icc)

9. Re-organized the code - renamed many files, moved declarations and
definitions to different files, and did a lot of overhaul.

10. Got rid of FCS_DEBUG_MOVES - it was never used and became obnoxious.

11. Added scripts/verify-simple-simon-range.pl and
scripts/simple-simon-stats-analysis.pl .

12. Added a regression test for verifying the validity of a 
Simple Simon solution.

13. Fixed Makefile.gnu to propagate CFLAGS to CREATE_SHARED.

14. 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.

Version 2.28.1 (18-May-2009)
----------------------------

1. Added a fix to an off-by-one-error in alloc.h that caused a segfault
on x86-64. (Thanks to Ido Kanner).

Version 2.28.0 (17-May-2009)
----------------------------

1. Several cleanups, refactoring and optimizations - especially to the
freecell.c file.

2. Converted more move functions ot positions_by_rank.

3. Changed the hash function from Bob Jenkins's to perl 5's and inlined it.
These were substantial optimizations.

4. 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.

5. Added the optional -Werror=implicit-function-declarations flag to the
compiler.

6. Added tests for some Simple Simon boards.

7. Created an fcs_cards_column_t type and converted the internals to use it.

8. 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.

9. Add the HACKING file with some information on benchmarking.

10. Renamed the configuration script to "Tatzer" so people who are used
to Autoconf's "./configure ; make ; make install" won't use it.

11. 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's now a lot of bit-fiddling logic to grow the 
dynamically-growing arrays when necessary.

12. Added support for adding the gcc -fomit-frame-pointer and -march=$CPU_ARCH
flags.

13. Added the following makefiles for alternative Linux compilers:
+
    - Makefile.icc
    - Makefile.tcc
    - Makefile.tendra
    - Makefile.lcc
    - Makefile.pcc
+
So far only Intel's icc and TenDRA produce working executables that
pass all the tests. The code had to be adapted to be compiled using TenDRA.

14. Added scripts/fcs-win32-create-package.pl that provides some guidance
in creating a package under Windows.

Version 2.26.0 (27-Apr-2009)
----------------------------

1. Now Freecell Solver can be compiled with gcc-2.95 (again). It was needed
to test it with this old gcc version.

2. Some fixes to CMakeLists.txt.

3. fcs_hash.c: now the secondary hash value calculation is optional
and should be enabled explicitly. Without it, Freecell Solver is faster:
    - http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/fc-solve-discuss/message/941

4. Surgically removed fcs_hash.c's "optimizing_for_cache" which made a small
speed improvement.
    - http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/fc-solve-discuss/message/942

5. 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).

6. Eliminated BUILD_TYPE=release warnings.

7. 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.
    - http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/fc-solve-discuss/message/943

8. Fixed the testing targets and the building of the rpm from the tar.gz
archive.

Version 2.24.0 (18-Apr-2009)
----------------------------

1. Many code cleanups and internal changes. Reduced the size of the library
considerably.

2. 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.

3. Implemented "cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=profile" . Can be activated using 
"./configure --profile"

4. 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.

5. Fixed some bugs (crashes, leaks, etc.) when running -opt on a range
of boards (or recycling instances with -opt in general).

6. Some CMake / Build system cleanups and improvements. Among them, trimmed 
the distribution from unnecessary files.

Version 2.22.0 (31-Mar-2009)
----------------------------

1. Various improvements to the CMake build process:
    - Updated freecell-solver-config
    - Fixed the building if build from a different directory.
        (e.g: mkdir build ; cd build ; cmake ..)
    - Now also building a static library by default. There's a cmake option
    to trigger it off.
    - Thanks to RISKO Gergely (the maintainer of the Freecell Solver Debian 
    package) for a contributed patch.

2. Fixed the rpmbuild -tb process on Mandriva Linux Cooker (and 
possibly other systems).

3. Removed some old, unnecessary and/or no-longer-working files.

4. Converted the package from the Public Domain to the MIT/X11 Licence
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_License ). This change was done due to
the many problems with licensing source code under the public domain:

    - http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Licensing_and_Law/public-domain.html

Version 2.20.0 (26-Mar-2009)
----------------------------

1. Updated the "NEWS" file (this file) with all the previous versions up
to 0.4 (the first release after the first initial release).

2. Many fixes to the Win32 NSIS Package creation process of CMake/CPack .
The NSIS package is now built and installed properly.

3. Fixed a bug with the recycling logic of the optimization thread.
+
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.

4. Fixed the --prefix flag in ./configure to be treated as a string instead
of a boolean.

5. Fixed the running of the executables under a specified PREFIX 
( http://www.cmake.org/Wiki/CMake_RPATH_handling )

6. Minor changes to "README", "INSTALL" and "USAGE".

Version 2.18.0 (19-Mar-2009)
----------------------------

1. 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 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 ).

2. Fixed using libredblack ( http://libredblack.sourceforge.net/ ) for states 
and stacks storage. (Compile-time options)

3. Added an option to use libJudy ( http://judy.sourceforge.net/ ) for states
and stacks storage. Yields better performance than libredblack, but worse
than the internal hash.

4. Added the -Wall by default for gcc in CMake.

5. Added the boards target to generate 24.board and 1941.board.

6. Updated the TODO file.

7. Added previous NEWS items for previous versions (in this file).

8. Now documenting the --version flag in USAGE.

9. Added an experimental ./configure convenience script (written in 
Perl) to run CMake using some configuration options. NOTE: Please don't 
use it to build packages.

10. Added "scripts/time-fcs.pl" to help time a 
freecell-solver-range-parallel-solve dump.

11. Got rid of the hard_dfs() scan. It is still accepted as an argument, but
is now using the soft_dfs() routines instead.

12. Many internal refactorings, cleanups tweaks and fine-tunings.

13. Moved away change_ver.sh to scripts/old/change_ver.sh - it does not
seem to be used any longer.

Version 2.16.0 (15-Mar-2009)
----------------------------

1. Made sure the indexes of the iterations when the "-s -i" flags are specified
are consecutive. Previously, they were much more inconsistent.

2. (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's
(like the libavl / libredblack code) was ported to use it instead.

Version 2.14.0 (25-Jan-2009)
----------------------------

1. Fixed the compilation with profiling information in Makefile.gnu (should be
of concern only to developers). 

2. Optimized move_stack_cards_to_different_stacks, yielding a substantial
speed increase.

3. Converted the identifiers from starting with freecell_solver_ to 
starting with fc_solve_ , which is shorter and saner.
+
freecell_solver_user_ is still used in the API in order to not break
compatibility.

4. 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).

5. Fixed run-tests.pl (and as a result also ctest -V and make test) to
run properly after a raw unpacking.

Version 2.12.0 ( 10-Dec-2008)
-----------------------------

1. A New Configuration and build system based on CMake 
( http://www.cmake.org/ ) which results in faster configurations
and builds, and a much reduced archive size.

2. There's a new suite of automated tests. See the file README for details
how to run them.

3. There's a new --version flag that prints the version of the library.

4. A speed optimization to the command line processing based on a radix-tree.

5. Many bug-fixes since 2.8.0. (Released as 2.8.x).

Version 2.8.0 ( 28-Sep-2002 )
-----------------------------

1. Better documentation and help screens. See: 
+
http://freshmeat.net/articles/time-to-rethink-your-help-flag

2. A preset system - see the "-l" flag in USAGE.

3. An option to read paramters from files. See "--read-from-file" in USAGE.

4. 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.

Version 2.6.0 ( 12-Jul-2002 )
-----------------------------

1. 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.

2. 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:
+
http://svn.berlios.de/viewcvs/fc-solve/trunk/fc-solve/presets/
+
Also see the "--st-name" option.

3. 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.

4. Several other command line options:
+
    - "--reparent-states"
    - "--calc-real-depth"
    - "--optimization-tests-order"
    - "--scans-synergy"
+
See the "USAGE" file for more information.

5. 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.

6. Updated the TODO list.

Version 2.4.0 ( 29-Mar-2002 )
-----------------------------

1. 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:
+
    - "-nst"  / "--next-soft-thread"
    - "-nht"  / "--next-hard-thread"
    - "-step" / "--soft-thread-step"

2. fcs_cl.h was included in the RPM .spec.

Version 2.2.0 ( 18-Feb-2002 )
-----------------------------

1. Freecell Solver's version is now kept in the file ver.txt

2. Added manual pages symbolic links for the following command-line board
generators:
+
    - make-gnome-freecell-board
    - make_pysol_freecell_board.py
    - make-aisleriot-freecell-board 
    - pi-make-microsoft-freecell-board

3. Moved more declarations of functions to header files (ending with .h)

4. Added some compiler-optional inline annotations for functions.

5. The identifiers of the library are now all residing under freecell_solver_

6. New flag:
+
    - "--max-stored-states"

7. The package can now be built as an RPM for Red Hat Linux and compatible
systems by running rpmbuild -ta on the archive.

8. Several speed-ups.

Version 2.0.0 ( 19-Dec-2001 )
-----------------------------

1. Added some presets for the PySol games "Beleaguered Castle", "Citadel" 
and "Streets and Alleys".

2. Re-factoring of the scans code to make it simpler.

3. Added many functions to the external API.

4. fc-solve now uses it, so it is fully loosely-coupled with the library
it is linked against.

5. Added a randomized DFS scan (with a user-defined seed).

6. Win32 Makefile can now generate a working DLL.

Version 1.10.0 ( 02-Oct-2001 )
------------------------------

Added support for solving deals of "Simple Simon" in addition to
all the freecell-like variants that it could solve before.

Version 1.8.0 ( 31-Aug-2001 )
-----------------------------

1. 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.

2. The GNOME AisleRiot board-generation program can generate the boards of
the more Solitaire variants which are supported by Freecell Solver.

Version 1.6.0 ( 11-Apr-2001 )
-----------------------------

1. Freecell Solver now has a solution optimization scan. Check it out
by adding the "-opt" flag.

2. 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't,
contact me and I'll add some more comments.

3. Several speed optimizations were done in the internal hash, so I think
it should run at least a little faster.

Version 1.4.0 ( 07-Feb-2001 )
-----------------------------

1. Many fixes for bugs and memory leaks.

2. A Soft-DFS scan - Depth-First Search that does not use procedural recursion
was introduced.

3. A New Best-first Search Scan (called A* in the code and documentation was
introduced).

4. A New Breadth-First-Search (BFS or BrFS) scan was introduced. It's not
very practical.

The choice between all those scans can be specified at run-time using 
command-line arguments.

Version 1.2.0 ( 21-Dec-2000 )
-----------------------------

1. Several moves were improved or added, so it can solve more layouts.

2. A more robust command-line argument handling, so less segfaults can be
expected if it's improperly used.

Version 1.0.0 ( 19-Nov-2000 )
-----------------------------

1. Added support for solving more game types.

2. Can be compiled so it will be less memory intensive (INDIRECT_STACK_STATES).

3. There's an API for use by third-party developers. It supports
suspending a solution process and resuming it from its last position.

4. Several random bug-fixes.

Version 0.10.0 ( 09-Oct-2000 )
------------------------------

1. Support was added for several Solitaire variants besides Freecell, such as 
Forecell, Seahaven Towers and Eight Off. 

2. It now can emits the moves themselves, instead of just the intermediate
solutiosn.

3. Several bug-fixes.

Version 0.8.0 ( 28-Aug-2000 )
-----------------------------

1. Some bug-fixes. 

2. Support for a variable number of freecells, columns, and cards per column.

3. Board generators for Microsoft Freecell, Freecell Pro and PySol.

4. An option to use the balanced binary tree implementations of libavl
( http://adtinfo.org/ ), glib ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLib ), or 
libredblack ( http://libredblack.sourceforge.net/ ). Using them makes 
Freecell Solver about 33% faster.

5. Support for using "T" instead of "10" in board input/output.

6. Improved Documentation.

Version 0.6 ( 28-Jul-2000 )
---------------------------

1. An extra movement that allows Freecell Solver to solve some boards which
it could not solve previously.

2. The order of the stacks and freecells is preserved throughout the
solutions.

3. There is now in abilitiy to limit to a certain number of iterations (so 
Freecell Solver will stop before it consumes too much memory)

4. Specify the order of the movements that will be tested. Usually, a test 
order can be found that will solve a given board really quickly.

Version 0.4 ( 06-Jun-2000 )
---------------------------

1. Three major code optimizations. Freecell Solver now runs much faster.

2. Freecell Solver is now able to start solving from a non-initial board.