May 11, 2009

The TLC will meet by teleconference on May 11, 2009 at 5:00 PM EST. To join the teleconference, call 877-421-0038 and use passcode 2646852 (COINTLC).

Agenda

1. OR/MS Today software survey
2. CoinAll
3. Rethinking the build process (cont.)
4. Splitting up CoinUtils

Notes

1. The OR/MS sotware survey was discussed and it was decided that Laci would submit Clp and Cbc. Ted will submit SYMPHONY.

2. Laci will work on releases.

3. The remainder of the meeting was spent discussing options for a new build process. Kipp suggest that keep in mind that COIN needs to serve the following different consituencies and that whatever system we come up with should work for all these.

Group 1: People who just want an executable, for example a solver such as Cbc or SYMPHONY. People in this group will not compile any source code -- not their own, not COIN-OR.

Group 2: People who want to build applications that link to COIN-OR libraries. People in this group will compile source code, but only their own, not COIN-OR source. A number of COIN-OR projects provide examples and the result of running the configure script generates Makefiles that are easily customized and I think these examples are extremely useful for individuals in this Group.

Group 3: People who want to compile and build a project from the source code. I guess this is primarily developers/project managers but potentially people using the project as a basis for research.

Group 4: People who not only want to compile a project, but may need to compile projects that the project depends on. I find myself doing this fairly frequently and I conjecture project managers of projects with a number of dependencies may also do this.

Leo's opinion is that an RPM-based system isn't really viable. After much discussion, conversation kept coming around to the fact that the only good solution seems to be something homegrown and for that, we would need someone with the time to implement it. It seems difficult to envision a system that would not make life more difficult for some part of the COIN-OR constituency. At the very end of the conversation, it was finally tentatively decided that perhaps we should proceed by baby steps. The first step would be to try to de-couple projects as much as possible by developing trunks against releases rather than against other trunks. This would be a big change for some PMs. Once this has been established, we could look into the next step in the process. This seems like a good approach to get the ball rolling. We'll continue the discussion on e-mail and at the next meeting.

4. It was decided to setup a Wiki-page to discuss in which components CoinUtils should be split up and where parts from OS could be merged in.

Respectfully submitted,

Ted Ralphs, TLC Chair