Should support for MathOptInterface be moved to an extension?

[palday]

Some examination of @time_imports for MixedModels.jl showed that MathOptInterface is one of our largest/slowest imports, even though we don't actually use and just use the NLopt 'native' interface.

I can do the legwork if this sounds reasonable.

cc @dmbates

[jw3126]

Same here I want to solve a tiny problem that does not need MOI, yet right now it is a big precomilation and loading cost. BTW thanks for wrapping nlopt and creating it in the first place, this is awesome!

[stevengj]

Sounds good to me.

[mlubin]

How can we do this without breaking JuMP+NLopt users on Julia pre 1.9? We need to support at least the latest LTS (1.6).

[palday]

@mlubin one option would be to have this change be a breaking release that is otherwise compatible with the current release series but with a higher julia compat bound. Then it's straightforward to backport fixes, etc. and when the next LTS is declared, we drop support for the current series.

[palday]

@mlubin there's also this: https://pkgdocs.julialang.org/v1/creating-packages/#Transition-from-normal-dependency-to-extension

[blegat]

Then it's straightforward to backport fixes,

I wouldn't say that, it's best to keep the compatibility for v1.6 in master