I’m working on a scheduling project and have so far been using linear programming tools. As I look down the road, I’m beginning to think that I’ll need to supplement or move beyond LP, perhaps with something like constraint programming (CP) techniques. Unfortunately, the CP arena seems to be littered with tools that are highly-spoken of but are no longer (or barely) supported. Anyone out there who can address CP tools?

So far, I’m leaning towards OscaR, because it seems fairly complete and it’s in Scala which is the Official General-Purpose Language of Thinkinator. I’ve looked at a variety of CP tools like Zinc (seems dead) and MiniZinc (seems barely alive), Geocode (C++), JaCoP (java-based), Choco (java-based), Comet (seems dead), etc. It’s a bit worrisome when I compare the level of activity and the apparent long-term stability of these projects to linear programming (Symphony, glpsol, lpsolv, etc).

Any experiences or insights on CP tools? (I’d prefer standalone tools with high-level syntax or Scala/Java-based tools, and not C++/Prolog-based tools.) Thanks!