BINMETA: a new Java package for meta-heuristic searches

International audienceWe present a new Java package, named BINMETA, for the development and the study of meta-heuristic searches for global optimization. The solution space for our optimization problems is based on a discrete representation, but it does not restrict to combinatorial problems, for every representation on computer machines finally reduces to a sequence of bits. We focus on general purpose meta-heuristics, which are not tailored to any specific subclass of problems. Although we are aware that this is not the first attempt to develop one unique tool implementing more than one meta-heuristic search, we are motivated by the following three main research lines on meta-heuristics. First, we plan to collect several implementations of meta-heuristic searches, developed by several programmers under the common interface of the package, where a particular attention is given to the common components of the various meta-heuristics. Second, the discrete representation for the solutions that we employ allows the user to perform a preliminary study on the degrees of freedom that is likely to give a positive impact on the performance of the meta-heuristic searches. Third, the choice of Java as a programming language is motivated by its flexibility and the use of a high-level objective-oriented paradigm. Finally, an important point in the development of BINMETA is that a meta-heuristic search implemented in the package can also be seen as an optimization problem, where its parameters play the role decision variables