accept dedicated types for parameters instead of strings

[nsajko]

According to the README, the current user interface has OptimizeParameters accept arbitrary strings for some of the parameters. This is usually problematic because of the possibility of typos and the requirement to check for typos in the implementation for safety.

An approach that would be automatically safer would be to rely on dispatch for typo-checking: instead of accepting arbitrary strings you could define a type (each possibly a Union of several other types) for each method parameter, and annotate the parameter with this type so the correct type would be required for the function invocation to succeed.

This approach would also allow for possibly tidier documentation, as it'd be possible to attach a doc string to each defined type (and/or constructor).

In a sense there are two approaches (may be combined/mixed variously): a different type for each specific configuration, or one type for all configurations. E.g.:

One type for all configs, for allowing better type stability:

module Options
     module SolveMod
        # or just use `@enum`, or one of the enum packages
        struct O  # not part of the public interface
            o::Int
        end
        const both = O(1)  # public interface
        const bbc = O(2)  # public interface
        const ilp = O(3)  # public interface
     end

    # other options
end

A type for each config, for allowing more specialization:

module Options
    module SolveMod
        struct Both end  # public interface
        struct BBC end  # public interface
        struct ILP end  # public interface
        const U = Union{Both,BBC,ILP}  # not part of the public interface
    end

    # other options
end

[jkhamphousone]

Thank you, your contributions mean a lot for me! I was not aware of this and going to code it :)

[jkhamphousone]

First push done on main-dev, solve_mod now accepts dedicated types instead of strings. Thanks @nsajko!
And README updated accordingly

All other parameters now :)

✅ solve_mod (pushed the 13th of July)
✅ sp_solve
✅ writeresults
✅ o_i
✅ s_ij
✅ r_ij (pushed the14th of July)

[jkhamphousone]

Closing thanks to #6

Again thank you to @nsajko :)