[Help-gsl] NLopt - new free nonlinear optimization package, potentially useful in GSL?

[Steven G. Johnson]

Dear GSL developers,

I wanted to let you know that I've put together a free (LGPL) library 
for nonlinear optimization called NLopt that may be useful for GSL or 
GSL users:

        http://ab-initio.mit.edu/nlopt

NLopt includes a wide variety of optimization algorithms, with features 
including

        * Global and local optimization
        * Unconstrained, bound-constrained,
          and nonlinear-inequality constrained problems
        * Optimization using function values only or
          using derivative information if it is available
        * Callable from C/C++, Fortran, Matlab, and GNU Octave

It started as a wrapper around a number of free-software optimization 
subroutines that were available online in C and Fortran, but has since 
grown to include original implementations of a number of published 
algorithms with no previous free implementations.  Because which 
optimization algorithm is "best" is often highly problem-dependent, 
NLopt is designed so that you can switch between algorithms just by 
changing a single parameter.

I hope this is helpful to you; I'm not sure if you want to call it from 
GSL, but you might consider linking to it from your manual or the 
"related packages" section of your web site.

Regards,
Steven G. Johnson