Re: [Help-glpk] How did you rewrite the cplex API?

[Andrew Makhorin]

> Browsing the glpk sources, I found the following file: examples/cplex/cplex.h
> 
> I am the author of lazylpsolverlibs [1], a project aiming at
> generating proxy libraries for commercial lp solvers. My goal is to
> provide opensource libraries to link to for open source programs that
> use commercial lp solvers. These libraries transparently proxy calls
> to the closed-source ones whenever the solver can be found on the
> machine. My primary target is Osi [2], but I think other opensource
> implementations can benefit from such a work.
> 
> Right now, what bothers me the most is copyright issues. Implementing
> proxy functions is not a problem, but writing headers in a way I can
> redistribute them freely gives me headaches. As a consequence, I am
> interested in knowing about the way you wrote this file. Did you start
> from the actual cplex.h? Did you rewrite it from scratch?
> 

>From scratch. I used the reference manual for cplex 9.0 publicly
available on their internet site (IIRC, it was in 2004 or 2005, before
IBM acquired this package) as well as some materials available on a
public cplex forum. The file examples/cplex/cplex.h contains only
function declarations; it does not contain any comments (which otherwise
might be considered as part of the manual), so I hope it does not
violate any copyrights, trade secrets, and patents. The interface module
to glpk included in examples/cplex is even not a clean room design,
because it is related in no way to the original cplex code.


Andrew Makhorin