[Os-project-managers] OS Constitution and CoinFinit.hpp

[Horand Gassmann]

Kipp Martin <kmartin at chicagobooth.edu> wrote:

> Hi Gus:
>
> Stefan -- feel free to ignore the below. I am copying you since your
> email started this.
>
> Stefan's email this evening has cleared up some cobwebs in the back of
> mind. The discussion about CoinFinite.hpp is very much related to
> something Jun and I discussed before you came on board. The idea, indeed
> part of the OS Constitution, was to keep a big chunk of OS independent
> from the rest of COIN-OR. In particular, we thought it was critical that
> people could use the OS API (OSCommonInterfaces) without needing any of
> the other COIN-OR projects. In fact, the OSCommon project with OSUtils,
> OSCommonInterfaces, and OSAgent is designed to do just that. This way
> people can process, read, write OSiL, OSoL, OSrL without other COIN-OR
> projects. I still think this is a very good idea. Putting CoinFinite.hpp
> in OSCommonInterfaces code blows this sky high.
>
> So what do we do? Why not define our own OSIsnan fucntion and put the
> OSIsnan into OSUtils?  We define nan in OSParameters so such an inline
> function should be easy.

That, of course, would be the easiest solution. I'd still like to  
know, though, perhaps for future reference, perhaps just to satisfy my  
own curiosity, what to make of Stefan's earlier response:

"So one solution would be to add $(OSLIB_CFLAGS) to the AM_CPPFLAGS in  
OSUtils/Makefile.am (ok, you would not only get the flags for  
CoinUtils, but of all dependencies, but that shouldn't matter much)."

Is this what creates the unconstitutionality? If not, or if a need  
arises to add a dependency somewhere outside of OSCommonInterfaces,  
would that mean that one has to modify Makefile.am and thus run  
BuildTools again?

Cheers

gus