  The NP-hard general factor problem asks, given a graph and for each vertex a
list of integers, whether the graph has a spanning subgraph where each vertex
has a degree that belongs to its assigned list. The problem remains NP-hard
even if the given graph is bipartite with partition U+V, and each vertex in U
is assigned the list {1}; this subproblem appears in the context of constraint
programming as the consistency problem for the extended global cardinality
constraint. We show that this subproblem is fixed-parameter tractable when
parameterized by the size of the second partite set V. More generally, we show
that the general factor problem for bipartite graphs, parameterized by |V|, is
fixed-parameter tractable as long as all vertices in U are assigned lists of
length 1, but becomes W[1]-hard if vertices in U are assigned lists of length
at most 2. We establish fixed-parameter tractability by reducing the problem
instance to a bounded number of acyclic instances, each of which can be solved
in polynomial time by dynamic programming.
