Re: [Caml-list] OCaml packaging problems

[Sven Luther <luther@lambda.u-strasbg.fr>]

On Tue, Jun 18, 2002 at 02:57:33PM +0200, Xavier Leroy wrote:
> > I am going to prepare a new ocaml debian package which will support what
> > you suggest, but still be compatible with the current way of doing
> > things (using the external ocaml-ldconf program).
> > [description omitted]
> 
> Looks good.  

:)))

> > But there are two points i much would like a consensus being attained on :
> > 
> > 1)  What will be the exact name of these directories ? It would be a good
> > idea, i think at least, if we choose the same name for all
> > installations of ocaml, and not everyone choosing it's own directory.
> > (or else we could have a ocaml option similar to -where which would
> > give a pointer to these directories ? and have the choice of the
> > directory highly configurable, maybe a -where_stub or something such ?)
> > 
> > Actually i have the proposition of "shlibs" from you, and "libexec" from
> > Gerd and the findlib people. and then i feel myself "stublibs" should be
> > a nice name too, especially since it is just the sub libraries we are
> > speaking about, and not the .cma and other such ocaml libraries.
> 
> My proposal for "shlibs" was just for the sake of example, and isn't
> very descriptive.  I like "stublibs" or "libexec" better, actually.

I would go for stublibs myself, but the findlib folk seems keen on
libexec. Maybe we should have a long discution here on that, or you
would decide and we keep that, i don't know, i would need more opinion
on this.

> > 2) I think it would be nice to distinguish two such directories,
> > /usr/lib/ocaml/shlibs for distribution native libraries (the packaged
> > ones that follow the rule), and /usr/local/lib/ocaml/shlibs for hand
> > installed packages.
> 
> Keep in mind that there is only one OCaml standard library directory.
> So, non-packaged libraries tend to install in `ocamlc -where`/LIBNAME,
> and would put their DLLs in `ocamlc -where`/stublibs.  Hence,
> I'm not sure the second directory /usr/local/lib/ocaml/stublibs
> would be used a lot.  But it doesn't hurt.

Yes, altough findlib seems to be able to know about it and install thing
in /usr/local/lib, if we need to.

> On a related issue, to facilitate the transition from the current
> scheme, it might be worth adding /usr/lib/ocaml as a third
> directory, at least for the next two releases or so.

We will keep the full separate directory stuff active in the meantime,
/usr/lib/ocaml is one of those dirs anyway, so there should be no
problem.

> > And should these two dirs be hardcoded into the ocaml suite, (as are
> > /usr/lib and /lib into the C ld.so) ?
> 
> I don't think so.  The hardcoding in ld.so seems to come from a desire
> to facilitate disaster recovery: even if the ld.so cache or
> configuration files get accidentally wiped, a reasonable number of
> dynamically-linked utility programs still run.  There is less to worry
> about wiping OCaml's ld.conf file.

Ok, ...

But then, i would argue for some more switch for ocaml (an ocamlc
-wherestubs or even a ocamlc -wherelocal) so that installation programs
not using findlib can have a greater control on where to install their
stuff.

Friendly,

Sven Luther
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