nocte- / rhea

A constraint solver based on Cassowary

Rhea

About

Rhea is an incremental constraint solver based on Cassowary, originally developed by Greg J. Badros and Alan Borning. The main differences are:

• Allows the programmer to write constraints in a natural way
• Rewritten in C++11
• CMake instead of GNU Autoconfig
• Unit tests use the Boost Test Framework
• Uses Doxygen for documentation
• Expression parser based on Boost Spirit
• Does not have a finite domain subsolver

Quick example

#include <rhea/simplex_solver.hpp>
#include <rhea/iostream.hpp>

main()
{
    rhea::variable left, mid, right;
    rhea::simplex_solver solver;

    solver.add_constraints(
    {
        mid == (left + right) / 2,
        right == left + 10,
        right <= 100,
        left >= 0
    });
    solver.suggest(mid, 2);

    std::cout << left << " " << mid << " " << right << std::endl;
    // Prints "0 5 10"
}

This is the line example from the original paper. The constraints make sure the line is at least 10 wide, fits inside the 0..100 range, and that the mid point is halfway the left and the right.

Note that even though we suggest the mid point to be at 2, the solver decides to move it over to 5 so all the constraints can be met.

Status

This software is beta. It does pass all unit tests, it is in active use by several applications, but the interface is not stable yet.

License

Rhea is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the MIT/Expat license.

Links

Curious about similar projects? Head over to overconstrained.io.