[Project-managers] Response Requested: Binary distribution and installation of header files

[Ted Ralphs]

This message applies to managers of the following projects. All others
may ignore.

Alps
CoinUtils
Cbc
Cgl
Clp
FlopCpp
Osi
Vol
SYMPHONY
Bcps
Blis
Bcp
DyLP
Ipopt
Smi
cppad
OS

As you may or may not have heard, we've been working for a few months
now on producing a coherent source distribution from which we can build
an interoperable set of binaries that will include all projects in the
COIN repository that use the standard build system (listed above). There
is currently a release candidate available for this distribution here:

https://projects.coin-or.org/svn/CoinAll/stable/1.0

In addition to straight binaries, we are endeavoring to produce Linux
RPMs from this distribution. However, there are some issues associated
with this, primarily related to header files.

1. Since there are so many header files installed when building all of
these COIN projects, we would like to install the headers in the
subdirectory "include/coin" so that if someone wants to install COIN in
/usr/local for instance, the root of their /usr/local/include directory
won't be flooded with COIN header files. We plan to make a change to the
build tools that will cause header files to automatically install in
this subdirectory. However, this may break some example codes that have
hard-coded include directory paths. We are willing to fix all of these
issues for you insofar as we can identify them, but we'd like to have
permission to do so.

2. In a related vein, it seems that most PMs are installing *all* of
their header files by default. The intent of the procedure is that only
header files needed to use the installed libraries, i.e., the ones
specifying the API, should actually be installed. We'd like to ask that
you take a look at exactly what header files are installed for your
project and try to make this list as small as possible.

We'd appreciate if you could please respond with your permission for us
to change the install location of your header files and thanks for your
support.

Cheers,

Ted
-- 
Dr. Ted Ralphs
Associate Professor
Industrial and Systems Engineering
Lehigh University
(610)758-4784
tkralphs at lehigh.edu
www.lehigh.edu/~tkr2