improve SLiM simplify() flags to minimize the number of edges #568
Description
There is a conversation here:
tskit-dev/tskit#2089 (reply in thread)
about how simplify() can actually increase the number of edges in certain cases. There is an issue discussing it here:
At the present moment that issue is closed as "not planned", but it sounds like @hyanwong does plan to do something with it, just not as tskit's default simplify behavior -- it would be controlled by a flag. If that happens, we want to consider adding that flag to SLiM's simplify behavior, either by default or as a user-controllable option. Before we make it the new default behavior, we'd certainly want to check that it doesn't slow SLiM down; it sounds like it requires an extra pass during simplify(), but on the other hand it makes the edge table smaller, so whether it would be a win or not, in terms of runtime performance, is unclear.
For now it seems like we need to just wait to see whether this feature even gets added. @petrelharp tagged.