From joe at gilith.com  Tue Sep 21 17:47:24 2010
From: joe at gilith.com (Joe Hurd)
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 10:47:24 -0700
Subject: [metis-users] Welcome!
Message-ID: <AANLkTikrn80vw8+embV9_n-8C7eSgbxociNPHDcA_-X2@mail.gmail.com>

Welcome to the metis-users mailing list!

Users of the Metis theorem prover are encouraged to join and discuss
bug reports, new features and applications, and anything else relevant
to Metis.

Cheers,

Joe


From joe at gilith.com  Wed Sep 29 00:39:53 2010
From: joe at gilith.com (Joe Hurd)
Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2010 17:39:53 -0700
Subject: [metis-users] New --time-limit command line argument
Message-ID: <AANLkTimBMCEX8cv+JoRBOyF5sxvarxRkaBRAg3SBKOpf@mail.gmail.com>

Responding to a feature request made by Andr?s Sicard-Ram?rez, I have
implemented a --time-limit N command line argument, which will cause
Metis to give up if it cannot complete within N seconds. Metis will
return "SZS status Unknown" it if is working on a problem and the time
limit kicks in.

The feature is implemented in Metis 2.3 (release 20100928), which can
be downloaded from

http://www.gilith.com/software/metis/

There are some caveats to this feature:

1. The timer is checked every time a clause is removed from the
waiting set and added to the active set. This is an expensive
operation, so Metis might continue to run past the time limit.

2. Metis has many failure modes beyond running out of time, such as
eating up all the memory it can find, so in most circumstances it is
preferable to use the ulimit shell command to set limits rather than
this command line argument.

Cheers,

Joe


From andres.sicard.ramirez at gmail.com  Wed Sep 29 04:36:32 2010
From: andres.sicard.ramirez at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?QW5kcsOpcyBTaWNhcmQtUmFtw61yZXo=?=)
Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2010 23:36:32 -0500
Subject: [metis-users] New --time-limit command line argument
In-Reply-To: <AANLkTimBMCEX8cv+JoRBOyF5sxvarxRkaBRAg3SBKOpf@mail.gmail.com>
References: <AANLkTimBMCEX8cv+JoRBOyF5sxvarxRkaBRAg3SBKOpf@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <AANLkTimEhCgn8DFua-M+cfg9o7j9jrxGsU8NecBV77da@mail.gmail.com>

Hi,

On Tue, Sep 28, 2010 at 7:39 PM, Joe Hurd <joe at gilith.com> wrote:
> Responding to a feature request made by Andr?s Sicard-Ram?rez, I have
> implemented a --time-limit N command line argument, which will cause
> Metis to give up if it cannot complete within N seconds. Metis will
> return "SZS status Unknown" it if is working on a problem and the time
> limit kicks in.
>

@Joe: Thanks for the implementation of this feature.

> There are some caveats to this feature:
>
> 2. Metis has many failure modes beyond running out of time, such as
> eating up all the memory it can find, so in most circumstances it is
> preferable to use the ulimit shell command to set limits rather than
> this command line argument.

I agree the ulimit command can be a better option. I am calling Metis
from an Haskell application using threads and I had some problems
killing the threads using ulimit + Metis. The new --time-limit
argument worked with my set-up.

All the best,

-- 
Andr?s