I'm willing to spearhead a module or set of modules containing:

• general constrained and unconstrained nonlinear optimization (sqp, global optimization, etc.)
• nonlinear equation solving (newton, least squares, etc.)
• scalar minimizers and root solvers (fmin, zeroin, etc.)

I have already modernized some classic codes and there are also some others with permissive licenses floating around. I am willing to merge mine into the stdlib. I need to gather then together and provide a nice interface so that a user can call any of the solvers in a similar way. We can have discussion on what that interface would look like. Here are some example codes:

• slsqp (SQP)
• pikaia (genetic algorithm)
• Brent codes zeroin and fmin
• Minpack
• Other derivative-free bracketed root solvers such as bisection, Anderson-Bjorck, Muller, Pegasus, ...
• Basic Newton and/or Broyden solvers
• FilterSD

Eventually we could even provide (optional) integrations with larger third-party and/or commercial libraries such as IPOPT and/or SNOPT

See also

Note that some of these in various Python packages are just wrappers to Fortran 77 codes (such as slsqp).

• Scipy.optimize
• PyOpt
• Netlib opt