Solid Optimizer Project

Today SolidOpt developers' meeting took place in the University of Plovdiv "Paisii Hilendarski". The goal was to inform the developers and visitors about the current status of the framework. We created an work plan for the next couple of months.

The meeting was divided into two parts - official and unofficial. The main task of the official part was to expose the basic ideas behind the framework. Alexander Penev made a brief introduction about the project and showed the work plan for the next months. (The presentation can be found at the bottom)

The work plan is as follows:
• Completion of the current state and creating documentation for it - this was the most important point, because every half-implemented functionality should be completed and documented. The goal is to have a relatively completed framework and to initiate its first version - 0.1 in december;
• Implementing current functionality from top to bottom - when we implement a functionality (e.g. plugin, sybsystem, etc) it should be in relatively completed state, documented and tested;
• Development of test cases - we discussed the need of creation of test cases. We decided that we need test cases in several levels and purposes. Soon a subproject with the test cases will be initiated;
• LLVM integration - the integration of another type virtual machine in the framework undoubtedly will be a very good decision for the framework. This will simplify the retargeting. We decided that LLVM should be integrated but it is much simpler to integrate JVM and then using VMKit to implement the integration of LLVM
• Preparation of web subsystems for release 0.1
  There are couple of important things to be done:
  • Integration of ViewVC, for viewing SVN;
  • Rethinking the user rights;
  • Users from LDAP should be integrated in SVN;
  • Better Doxygen configuration;
  • Implementation of SolidOpt Now! (RealTimeOpt/online) and the flex subsystem.
• Creation of good naming convention - we decided that we should have convention, which describes in details the naming of files, classes, interfaces, etc;
• Developers' convention - we decided that we should have convention, which should be followed by the developers. It will contains different rights and requirements to be a SolidOpt developer;
• License - we decided that the license will be LGPL for now, but this is going to be discussed later, because we should have a licence hierarchy. This is because there might have plugins and subsystems with different license agreement;
• Parallel development of tools for optimization, which use SolidOpt - when we have a relatively standalone optimization method (such as MethodInline at IL level) we should develop tool that uses it;
• Creation of subprojects - we decided that everything that is "good to be done" should be described first as subproject and then implemented.

The unofficial part of the meeting was an workshop, where we discussed the unclear points of the plan.