Changes of this page with respect to the 2011 competition:

  • Reminder that the solver directory must be assumed read-only.

Licences and authorizations

We encourage participants to publish their solver under a free licence. However, this is not mandatory. If additional licences or authorizations are necessary to execute the submitted solver in the context of the competition then the submitter has to provide these to the organizers.

Solver bundling

  • Each participating solver must be bundled as a single directory (from now on called "the solver directory"). That directory must contain everything that is needed to execute the solver in the execution environment.
  • A particular solver is identified by
    1. its name: an alphanumeric string that remains the same over successive versions of the solver;
    2. a version consisting only of numerical characters and the dot characters, and containing at least one numerical character. If you update your solver (before the end of the submission deadline, of course) then you must increment the version number.
    A solver instance with name n and version v carries the identifier n-v.
  • The name of the directory must be the same as the identifier of the solver (in particular, it contains the version number).
  • Each solver directory must contain an executable whose name is the identifier of the solver (from now on called "the solver").
  • The solver directory may contain support files and/or sub-directories. Note that the solver directory must be assumed read-only during the execution of the solver. (see the specification fo the the execution environment).
  • The solver directory must contain a file README that indicates to which track the solver is submitted. Each submission is for one track only; if you want to participate in different tracks than please send separate submissions for each track.

Example

Unversité Paris-Diderot decides to develop a solver which they call denis. Successive development versions are numbered 0.1, 0.2, ..., and the final version submitted to the competition gets version number 1.0.

The identifier of the finally submitted solver is denis-1.0. The bundling consists of a directory denis-1.0. This directory contains an executable also called denis-1.0, plus possibly other files and directories.

Submission of the solver directory

  • Create an archive using the UNIX utility tar. The name of the tarball must be the identifier of the solver, plus the suffix .tar. Continuing the above example, the tarball would be called denis-1.0.tar.
  • Place that tarball on an ftp or web server, and make sure it is publicly accessible by one of the protocols http or ftp.
  • Send an email to misc-competition@inria.fr, with
    • on the subject line, "Solver Submission", followed by the name of the solver, and its version
    • in the body, put on separate lines:
      1. the url from which your archive can be downloaded,
      2. the md5sum of your archive,
      3. the track of the competition to which you are submitting.
  • Your submission is only completed when you have received confirmation from us. Do not remove the archive from the server before the confirmation. In case of an unsuccesful submission we are obliged to use the last submitted version of your solver.

Additional information to be submitted

  • Please send us a one-line description of your solver that we can use in an itemized list of participants to the competition, something like Denis, an optimizing solver using dice throwing and advanced bit bending.
  • Please prepare on your own web server a web page describing your solver in greater detail, of the kind that you would use to advertise software produced by your research lab. That page should allow to access the technique used in the solver and give pointers to downloading the software. Please send us the URL of that web page.