New README (markdown). (#2797)

2 files changed, 138 insertions, 102 deletions

diff --git a/README b/README
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-This is CVC4 release version 1.6.  For build and installation notes,
-please see the INSTALL file included with this distribution.
-
-The project leaders are Clark Barrett (Stanford University) and Cesare
-Tinelli (The University of Iowa).  For a full list of authors, please
-refer to the AUTHORS file in the source distribution.
-
-CVC4 is a tool for determining the satisfiability of a first order
-formula modulo a first order theory (or a combination of such
-theories).  It is the fourth in the Cooperating Validity Checker
-family of tools (CVC, CVC Lite, CVC3) but does not directly
-incorporate code from any previous version.
-
-CVC4 is intended to be an open and extensible SMT engine.  It can be
-used as a stand-alone tool or as a library.  It has been designed to
-increase the performance and reduce the memory overhead of its
-predecessors.  It is written entirely in C++ and is released under an
-open-source software license (see the file COPYING in the source
-distribution).
-
-*** Getting started with CVC4
-
-For help installing CVC4, see the INSTALL file that comes with this
-distribution.
-
-We recommend that you visit our CVC4 tutorials online at:
-
-  http://cvc4.cs.stanford.edu/wiki/Tutorials
-
-for help getting started using CVC4.
-
-*** Contributing to the CVC4 project
-
-We are always happy to hear feedback from our users:
-
-* if you need help with using CVC4, please refer to
-  http://cvc4.stanford.edu/#Technical_Support.
-
-* if you need to report a bug with CVC4, or make a feature request,
-  please visit our bugtracker at https://github.com/CVC4/CVC4/issues or
-  write to the cvc-bugs@cs.stanford.edu mailing list.  We are very
-  grateful for bug reports, as they help us improve CVC4, and patches
-  are generally reviewed and accepted quickly.
-
-* if you are using CVC4 in your work, or incorporating it into
-  software of your own, we'd like to invite you to leave a description
-  and link to your project/software on our "Third Party Applications"
-  page at
-  http://cvc4.cs.stanford.edu/wiki/Public:Third_Party_Applications
-
-* if you are interested in contributing code (for example, a new
-  decision procedure implementation) to the CVC4 project, please
-  contact one of the project leaders.  We'd be happy to point you to
-  some internals documentation to help you out.
-
-Thank you for using CVC4!
-
-*** The History of CVC4
-
-The Cooperating Validity Checker series has a long history.  The
-Stanford Validity Checker (SVC) came first in 1996, incorporating
-theories and its own SAT solver.  Its successor, the Cooperating
-Validity Checker (CVC), had a more optimized internal design, produced
-proofs, used the Chaff SAT solver, and featured a number of usability
-enhancements.  Its name comes from the cooperative nature of decision
-procedures in Nelson-Oppen theory combination, which share amongst
-each other equalities between shared terms.  CVC Lite, first made
-available in 2003, was a rewrite of CVC that attempted to make CVC
-more flexible (hence the "lite") while extending the feature set: CVC
-Lite supported quantifiers where its predecessors did not.  CVC3 was a
-major overhaul of portions of CVC Lite: it added better decision
-procedure implementations, added support for using MiniSat in the
-core, and had generally better performance.
-
-CVC4 is the new version, the fifth generation of this validity checker
-line that is now celebrating twenty-one years of heritage.  It
-represents a complete re-evaluation of the core architecture to be
-both performant and to serve as a cutting-edge research vehicle for
-the next several years.  Rather than taking CVC3 and redesigning
-problem parts, we've taken a clean-room approach, starting from
-scratch.  Before using any designs from CVC3, we have thoroughly
-scrutinized, vetted, and updated them.  Many parts of CVC4 bear only a
-superficial resemblance, if any, to their correspondent in CVC3.
-
-However, CVC4 is fundamentally similar to CVC3 and many other modern
-SMT solvers: it is a DPLL(T) solver, with a SAT solver at its core and
-a delegation path to different decision procedure implementations,
-each in charge of solving formulas in some background theory.
-
-The re-evaluation and ground-up rewrite was necessitated, we felt, by
-the performance characteristics of CVC3.  CVC3 has many useful
-features, but some core aspects of the design led to high memory use,
-and the use of heavyweight computation (where more nimble engineering
-approaches could suffice) makes CVC3 a much slower prover than other
-tools.  As these designs are central to CVC3, a new version was
-preferable to a selective re-engineering, which would have ballooned
-in short order.
-
-*** For more information
-
-More information about CVC4 is available at:
-http://cvc4.cs.stanford.edu/
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..153118c6b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,138 @@
+[![License: BSD](
+    https://img.shields.io/badge/License-BSD%203--Clause-blue.svg)](
+        https://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause)
+[![Build Status](
+    https://travis-ci.org/CVC4/CVC4.svg?branch=master)](
+        https://travis-ci.org/CVC4/CVC4)
+
+CVC4
+===============================================================================
+
+CVC4 is a tool for determining the satisfiability of a first order formula
+modulo a first order theory (or a combination of such theories).  It is the
+fourth in the Cooperating Validity Checker family of tools (CVC, CVC Lite,
+CVC3) but does not directly incorporate code from any previous version.
+
+CVC4 is intended to be an open and extensible SMT engine.  It can be used as a
+stand-alone tool or as a library.  It has been designed to increase the
+performance and reduce the memory overhead of its predecessors.  It is written
+entirely in C++ and is released under an open-source software license (see file
+[COPYING](https://github.com/CVC4/CVC4/blob/master/COPYING)).
+
+
+Website
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+More information about CVC4 is available at:
+http://cvc4.cs.stanford.edu/
+
+Download
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+The latest version of CVC4 is available on GitHub:
+https://github.com/CVC4/CVC4
+
+Source tar balls and binaries for releases and latest stable builds of the
+[master branch](https://github.com/CVC4/CVC4) on GitHub can be
+found [here](http://cvc4.cs.stanford.edu/downloads).
+
+
+Build and Dependencies
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+CVC4 can be built on Linux and macOS.  For Windows, CVC4 can be cross-compiled
+using Mingw-w64.
+
+For detailed build and installation instructions on these platforms,
+see file [INSTALL.md](https://github.com/CVC4/CVC4/blob/master/INSTALL.md).
+
+
+Getting Started
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+We recommend that you visit our CVC4 tutorials online at:
+
+  http://cvc4.cs.stanford.edu/wiki/Tutorials
+
+for help getting started using CVC4.
+
+
+Contributing
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+We are always happy to hear feedback from our users:
+
+* if you need help with using CVC4, please refer to
+  [http://cvc4.stanford.edu/#Technical_Support](http://cvc4.stanford.edu/#Technical_Support).
+
+* if you need to report a bug with CVC4, or make a feature request, please
+  visit our bugtracker at our
+  [GitHub issues](https://github.com/CVC4/CVC4/issues) page or write to the
+  cvc-bugs@cs.stanford.edu mailing list.  We are very grateful for bug reports,
+  as they help us improve CVC4, and patches are generally reviewed and accepted
+  quickly.
+
+* if you are using CVC4 in your work, or incorporating it into software of your
+  own, we'd like to invite you to leave a description and link to your
+  project/software on our [Third Party Applications](http://cvc4.cs.stanford.edu/wiki/Public:Third_Party_Applications).
+
+* if you are interested in contributing code (for example, a new
+  decision procedure implementation) to the CVC4 project, please
+  contact one of the [project leaders](#project_leaders).
+  We'd be happy to point you to some internal documentation to help you out.
+
+Thank you for using CVC4!
+
+
+Project Leaders
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+* [Clark Barrett](http://theory.stanford.edu/~barrett/) (Stanford University)
+* [Cesare Tinelli](http://homepage.cs.uiowa.edu/~tinelli/) (The University of Iowa)
+
+
+Authors
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+For a full list of authors, please refer to the
+[AUTHORS](https://github.com/CVC4/CVC4/blob/master/AUTHORS) file.
+
+History
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+The Cooperating Validity Checker series has a long history.  The Stanford
+Validity Checker (SVC) came first in 1996, incorporating theories and its own
+SAT solver.  Its successor, the Cooperating Validity Checker (CVC), had a more
+optimized internal design, produced proofs, used the Chaff SAT solver, and
+featured a number of usability enhancements.  Its name comes from the
+cooperative nature of decision procedures in Nelson-Oppen theory combination,
+which share amongst each other equalities between shared terms.
+
+CVC Lite, first made available in 2003, was a rewrite of CVC that attempted to
+make CVC more flexible (hence the "lite") while extending the feature set: CVC
+Lite supported quantifiers where its predecessors did not.
+
+CVC3 was a major overhaul of portions of CVC Lite: it added better decision
+procedure implementations, added support for using MiniSat in the core, and had
+generally better performance.
+
+CVC4 is the fifth generation of this validity checker line.  It represents a
+complete re-evaluation of the core architecture to be both performant and to
+serve as a cutting-edge research vehicle for the next several years.  Rather
+than taking CVC3 and redesigning problem parts, we've taken a clean-room
+approach, starting from scratch.  Before using any designs from CVC3, we have
+thoroughly scrutinized, vetted, and updated them.  Many parts of CVC4 bear only
+a superficial resemblance, if any, to their correspondent in CVC3.
+
+However, CVC4 is fundamentally similar to CVC3 and many other modern SMT
+solvers: it is a DPLL(T) solver, with a SAT solver at its core and a delegation
+path to different decision procedure implementations, each in charge of solving
+formulas in some background theory.
+
+The re-evaluation and ground-up rewrite was necessitated, we felt, by the
+performance characteristics of CVC3.  CVC3 has many useful features, but some
+core aspects of the design led to high memory use, and the use of heavyweight
+computation (where more nimble engineering approaches could suffice) makes CVC3
+a much slower prover than other tools.  As these designs are central to CVC3, a
+new version was preferable to a selective re-engineering, which would have
+ballooned in short order.