How to Use This Manual

The manual is divided into six chapters. The first is the introduction, which you are reading now. Chapter 2 describes how to install SYMPHONY from either a source or binary distribution. If you have already managed to get SYMPHONY running using the instructions in the README file, you might want to skip to Chapter 3. However, keep in mind that the manual contains additional details for customizing your build. Chapter 3 contains an overview of how to use in all three major modes--as a black-box solver through the interactive shell or on the command line, as a callable library, and as a customizable framework. Chapter 4 contains further depth and a more complete technical description of the design and implementation of SYMPHONY. In Section 4.3, we describe the overall design of SYMPHONY without reference to the implementational details and with only passing reference to parallelism. In Section 4.4, we discuss the details of the implementation. In Section 4.5, we briefly discuss issues involved in parallel execution of SYMPHONY. Chapter 5 describes in detail how to develop a custom application using SYMPHONY. Note that it is not necessary to read Chapter 4 before undertaking development of a SYMPHONY application, but it may help. Chapter 6 contains reference material. Section 6.1 contains a description of the native C interface for the callable library. Section 6.2 contains a description of the interface for C++ environments. Section 6.3 contains a description of the user callback functions. SYMPHONY's parameters are described in Section 6.4. For reference use, the HTML version of this manual may be more practical, as the embedded hyperlinks make it easier to navigate.

Ted Ralphs
2016-02-19