Re: [Caml-list] Alternative proposal: COAN

["Nicolas Cannasse" <warplayer@free.fr>]

> The problem is that every package has a different build system,
> configuration system (Makefile targets), installation directories,
> etc. Of course it is "easy" to package them : just issue the right
> (Makefile or whatever) commands, set the right Makefile variables,
> etc. The problem is that you have to spend some time figuring out
> these commands. Ideally, it should be as simple as :
>
>   perl Makefile.Pl
> or
>   python ./setup.py build
>
> One more point is that ocaml is multi-platform : so this build system
> should be able to run on unix, Windows, MacOS. Packages that wraps C
> libraries will probably be platform-specific but it think it would be
> nice if pure ocaml programs could be built the same way on every
> platform supported by ocaml.

Will I need to install wonderful programming langages such as perl or python
on my Windows box ? Without any flames, why are always unix users wants to
make things so complicated ? :)
I will much more prefer something like :

ocaml Makefile.ml

And then the build system will be multiplatform since you're using ocaml...
assuming that're using Unix functions supported on both MacOS & Windows (
theses are documented ) and not calling any command-line function (nor using
paths such as /user/ocaml/and_much_more ).

I think the best is to have such a fully-caml-written tool for both
compilation (ocamake is already doing this, but right now there is no
support for C stubs compilation) and installation which does not rely on
OS-specific problems such as path organisation and so on... Such problems
could be handled in the "install" tool configuration file.

Nicolas Cannasse

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