eclipseclp.org

What It Is

ECLiPSe is an open-source constraint logic programming (CLP) system designed primarily for the efficient development and deployment of constraint programming applications. It is especially well suited to solving combinatorial optimization problems such as planning, scheduling, resource allocation, rostering, and transportation, and it is also an ideal tool for teaching combinatorial problem solving, constraint programming, and search techniques.

Core Dimensions

• Features and Use Cases: ECLiPSe is not just a programming language, but a complete development environment. It includes multiple built-in constraint solver libraries, such as finite domains, interval reasoning, and linear constraints. It supports high-level modeling and control languages, and provides both the tkeclipse GUI and a command-line development environment.
• Language Support and Ecosystem: The core language is backward-compatible with Prolog, supporting the ISO standard as well as multiple dialects. In terms of integration and ecosystem, it performs very well: it supports the MiniZinc modeling language and can be deeply integrated with major commercial and open-source solvers such as CPLEX, Gurobi, COIN-OR, and Gecode.
• APIs and Embeddability: It provides tight interfaces with C/C++ for bidirectional calls and data exchange, as well as loose/remote interfaces with Java, Python, PHP, and Tcl/Tk, making it easy to embed into host environments.
• Open Source and Documentation: It was open-sourced by Cisco in 2006 under a Mozilla-style license. The documentation quality is excellent, with both online and printable documentation, as well as several textbooks dedicated to learning ECLiPSe.

Pricing

Completely open-source and free, released under a Mozilla-style public license, with source code hosted on Sourceforge.

Pros and Cons

• Pros: Rich solver ecosystem and powerful interfaces; no hard system design limits, aside from memory constraints; fully compatible with ISO Prolog; comprehensive documentation and teaching resources.
• Cons: The Prolog-based declarative paradigm has a steep learning curve for general developers; project updates are slow, with the latest major version 7.0 released in 2018; parallel functionality for shared-memory multiprocessors is no longer actively maintained.

Who It’s For

Operations research engineers, algorithm researchers, university faculty and students, and developers who need to solve complex combinatorial optimization problems and have a foundation in logic programming.

Access in China

Unknown. However, its source code is hosted on Sourceforge, and access to Sourceforge from mainland China is often unstable or restricted.