Re: OCaml's Cathedral & Bazaar (was Re: [Caml-list] Completeness of "Unix" run-time library)

[Gerd Stolpmann <info@gerd-stolpmann.de>]

On Fre, 2004-03-19 at 01:47, Kenneth Knowles wrote:
> > Of course, the Bazaar needs a bit more organisation, and as you know, I
> > wrote software supporting this: Findlib and GODI. Findlib is mature
> > software, even from a professional point of view, and many people are
> > already using it. GODI is already usable. So the technical solutions
> > exist (that means: THERE IS A CPAN FOR OCAML, although it uses a
> > different implementation for a different language, and does not match
> > C.*AN), and the remaining question is: Does the community accept it?
> 
> CPAN is much more than an automatic-installation tool.  The social organization
> of the perl namespaces is by far the most important aspect of CPAN.  The module
> to automatically install dependencies etc is just a minor convenience next to
> the over-arching organizational structure.  My comments with regards to
> namespacing and modules are focused on how to present a wide range of extended
> libraries in a hierarchy that seems "standard" to someone browsing the archives,
> to inspire confidence in the completeness and authoritativeness of the archive.
> GODI doesn't (and doesn't intend to, so that's fine) solve this issue, but
> clearly the auto-installer on top of such an organization is ready.

This is also my point: We need some organization. Of course, as we don't
have namespaces in ocaml, so this aspect does not apply (and it would be
nonsense to implement namespaces only to have something people can talk
about). But there are lots of other aspects, e.g. which libraries are
missing, how accessibility of software can be ensured, etc.

Gerd
-- 
------------------------------------------------------------
Gerd Stolpmann * Viktoriastr. 45 * 64293 Darmstadt * Germany 
gerd@gerd-stolpmann.de          http://www.gerd-stolpmann.de
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