Clafer Instance Generator
v0.3.6
Clafer is a powerful (equivalent to first-order predicate logic) yet lightweight structural modeling language. Despite simplicity and conciseness of Clafer, writing correct models remains challenging due to hard-to-predict interactions among all constraints expressed in the model. Clafer instance generator (ClaferIG) is an interactive tool that generates instances and counter examples of concrete clafers in a Clafer model. If the concrete clafers do not have contradicting constraints, the generator produces valid instance data. Otherwise, the generator produces an unsatisfiable core which included all contradicting constraints and generates a counter example by removing one constraint from the core. The generator can potentially produce many instances if the concrete clafers are not fully specialized. The generator produces different instances on-demand. With these capabilities, the instance generator can be used for debugging models: checking the consistency of the model and detecting under- and
overconstraining of the model. The instance generator can also be used programmatically via API (the command line and interactive session interfaces only use the API).
For more information, see technical report.
Contributors
- Jimmy Liang, Main developer.
- Michał Antkiewicz, Requirements, development, architecture, testing, technology transfer.
- Luke Michael Brown, co-op student May-Aug 2013. Many improvements.
Getting the Clafer Instance Generator
Clafer can be installed from a binary distribution (preferred), from Hackage, and from the source code.
Dependencies for running
Regardless of the installation method, the following are required:
Installation from binaries
Binary distributions of the release 0.3.6 of Clafer Tools for Windows, Mac, and Linux,
can be downloaded from Clafer Tools - Binary Distributions.
- download the binaries and unpack
<target directory> of your choice
- add the
<target directory> to your system path so that the executables can be found
Installation From Hackage
Dependencies
ClaferIG is now available on Hackage and it can be installed using
cabal update
cabal install claferIG
cd <cabal's lib or share folder> (C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\cabal\i386-windows-ghc-7.6.3\claferIG-0.3.6 on Windows or .cabal/share/x86_64-linux-ghc-7.6.3/claferIG-0.3.6/ on Linux)
- to automatically download Alloy jars
- To get the
minisatproover library
- copy the following into the Cabal's
bin folder
- the file
alloyIG.jar
- the folder
tools
- the folder
lib
Installation from the source code
Dependencies
- Clafer compiler (to produce Alloy models (
.als)). The version number of the compiler must match the version of the instance generator.
- Cabal >= 1.18
- On Linux, might need to manually install
zlib1g-dev and libncurses5-dev to build one of Haskell packages on which ClaferIG depends
- on Ubuntu, execute
sudo apt-get install zlib1g-dev libncurses5-dev
On Windows
- MinGW+MSYS
- download mingw-get-setup.exe
- since the Haskell Platform already contains MinGW, only install MSYS. Installing another MinGW causes problems as it contains different versions of tools as compared to the MinGW in the Haskell Platform
- choose the existing MinGW location, e.g.,
c:\...\HaskellPlatform\2013.2.0.0\MinGw
- ensure
wget and unzip are selected to be installed
- add the
bin folder of MSYS (MinGW\MSYS\1.0\bin) to your system path
Important: Branches must correspond
All related projects are following the simultaneous release model.
The branch master contains releases, whereas the branch develop contains code under development.
When building the tools, the branches should match.
Releases from branches 'masterare guaranteed to work well together.
Development versions from branchesdevelop` should work well together but this might not always be the case.
Building
- install the Clafer compiler
- in some
<source directory>, execute git clone git://github.com/gsdlab/claferIG.git
- in
<source directory>/claferIG, execute
cabal update
make init
make
Installation
- execute
make install to=/c/Users/<your user name>/AppData/Roaming/cabal/bin
Note:
On Windows, use / with the make command instead of \.
Integration with Sublime Text 2
See IDEs/claferIG-README.md
Usage
Clafer Instance Generator can be used in interactive and batch modes, as well as, an API.
Command-line Usage
(As printed by claferIG --help)
igaONS] FILE
Common flags:
--all=INT Saves all instances up to the
provided scope or a
counterexample.
--savedir=FILE Specify the directory for
storing saved files.
--alloysolution Convert Alloy solution to a
Clafer solution.
-b --bitwidth=INTEGER Set the bitwidth for integers.
-m --maxint=INTEGER Set the bitwidth for integers
based on the largest required
number. Overrides --bitwidth
argument.
-u --useuids Use unique clafer names in the
Clafer solution.
--addtypes Add colon/reference types to
the Clafer solution.
-j --json Render solution as JSON
(forces 'addUids').
-i --flatten-inheritance-comp Flatten inheritance during
compiling ('alloy' and 'alloy42'
modes only)
-l --no-layout-comp Don't resolve off-side rule
layout during compiling
-c --check-duplicates-comp Check duplicated clafer names
during compiling
-f --skip-resolver-comp Skip name resolution during
compiling
--ss=SCOPESTRATEGY --scope-strategy-comp Use scope computation strategy
during compiling: none, simple
(default), or full.
-? --help Display help message
-V --version Print version information
claferIG <model file name>.cfr
- opens an interactive session and displays the minimal instance or a counterexample
claferIG <model file name>.cfr -all <scope>
- opens a non-interactive session and saves all instances up to the provided scope or a counterexample to files named
<model file name>.cfr.<instance number>.data, one instance per file.
Interactive Session Usage
In the interactive mode, the users can invoke the following commands by pressing a letter marked in the command name between '' or the whole command as marked by '':
--------------------
| ClaferIG 0.3.6 |
--------------------
You can invoke the following commands as indicated by single quotes:
[tab] - print the available commands
- auto-complete command name, a clafer name, or clafer instance name in a given context
'n'ext, [enter] - to produce the next instance if available or to output a message that no more
instances exist within the given scope
'i'ncrease - to increase the maximum number of instances of a given clafer or all clafers (scope)
's'et - to set the maximum number of instances of a given clafer or all clafers (scope)
'm'axint, 'maxint' - to set the bitwidth by providing the largest integer
sa'v'e - to save all instances displayed so far or a counterexample to files named
<model file name>.cfr.<instance number>.data, one instance per file
'q'uit - to quit the interactive session
'r'eload - to reload your clafer model
'h'elp - to display this menu options summary
'scope' - to print out the values of the global scope and individual Clafer scopes
'saveScopes' - to generate a '<model>.cfr-scope' file with the current scopes
'loadScopes' - to load scopes from a '<model>.cfr-scope' file
'setUnsatCoreMinimization' - to choose UnSAT core minimization strategy [fastest | medium | best]. Default: fastest
'c', 'claferModel' - to print out the original Clafer model verbatim
'a', 'alloyModel' - to print out the output of Clafer translator verbatim
'alloyInstance' - to print out the Alloy xml document of the most recent solution
'f'ind - to print a Clafer with given name found in the most recent solution
Parameterized command usage:
'i [enter]' - to increase for all clafers by 1
'i <name> [enter]' - to increase for the clafer <name> by 1
'i <name> <number>' - to increase for the clafer <name> by <number>
's <number> [enter]'- to set for the clafers to <number>
's <name> <number>' - to set for the clafer <name> to <number>
'f <name>' - to display a clafer <name>
'setUnsatCoreMinimization fastest' - fastest but the worst
'setUnsatCoreMinimization medium'
'setUnsatCoreMinimization best' - best but slowest even for modest size cores
Instance data
The instance data notation is very similar to a regular Clafer notation for concrete clafers with a few differences:
- no constraints
- no types and super types
- except when
--adduidsandtypes parameter is used
- no clafer and group cardinalities (each clafer has the default group
(0..*) and clafer (1..1) cardinality)
- no clafers not present in the instance
Additionally, the data notation contains concrete values of the clafers and suffix numbers to distinguish among multipe instances of the same clafer.
Note:
The instance data models could be read by the Clafer translator if the translator had simple type inference support.
Example
For a model
abstract A
a ?
b +
c : integer ?
d -> E 2
g -> E 2
h : integer
abstract E
f : integer +
a1 : A
e1 : E
e2 : E
A possible instance data looks as follows:
=== Instance 1 Begin ===
a1
b$1
b$2
c = 10
d$1 = e1
d$2 = e2
g1 = e1
h$1 = 5
g2 = e2
h$2 = 2
e1
f$1 = 2
f$2 = 3
f$3 = 4
--- Instance 1 End ---
Near-miss instance
Near-miss instance notation is the same as the instance data notation. Additionally, it indicates which constraints belong to the UnSAT Core.
Example
For a model
abstract A
a ?
b ?
[ a ] // C1
a1 : A
[ no a ] // C2
[ b ] // C3
Constraints C1, C2, and C3 form an UnSAT Core. Removal of any of them will make the model satisfiable. The constraint C1 is part of the model and cannot be removed (part of domain knowledge). Therefore, either C2 or C3 must be removed to remove the inconsistency.
On possible near-miss instance:
a1
a
b
Here, C1 and C3 are satisfied but C2 is not. To resolve the conflict and assuming that the counter example is actually a correct instance data, the user has to modify the model by removing C2. However, should the counter example actually represent incorrect instance data, the user can remove C3 to resolve the inconsistency.
How it works
The Clafer instance generator:
- translates the input Clafer model (.cfr) to an Alloy model (.als). The compiler's intermediate representation (IR) contains the mapping between Clafer names and Alloy names. The IR also contains the smallest scopes for each Alloy signature to ensure that a valid instance can be found if it exists
- invokes Alloy Analyzer to produce an instance or find an UnSAT core
** given an UnSAT core, removes constraints from the core until an instance is found - that instance represents the counterexample which violates the removed constraints
- translates the instance or the counterexample data produced by Alloy Analyzer to Clafer instance data format using the name map from IR in a reverse direction,
- for a counterexample, translates the counter example in Alloy to Claefr instance data and constraint violations in Alloy into constraint violations in Clafer model
Need help?