Re: [Caml-list] CDK with Ocaml 3.06 (fwd)

[Sven LUTHER <luther@dpt-info.u-strasbg.fr>]

On Mon, Oct 14, 2002 at 07:39:31PM +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 14, 2002 at 06:42:56PM +0200, Alain Frisch wrote:
> > Of course findlib is useful !  But you can't do:
> > 
> > ocamlfind fetch some_package
> > 
> > to have findlib automatically download and install the last version of
> > some_package and its dependencies. I guess this is the kind of
> > fonctionality people mean when referring to a package manager.
> 
> Ok, anyway this feature can be easily implemented in the findlib
> package, but a lot of new issues raise then.
> Mainly:
> 
> 1) does we really need such a feature, aren't distribution born for such
>    issues? (obviously I'm thinking about the Linux world here)

Well, i guess the problem is essentially for the windows folk, and the
solaris/linux user who are used to rebuilding their stuff themselves.

Also suppor on rpm based distribs is not as mature as we have in debian,
i think.

> 2) if we really need such a feature (for example just to have
>    transparent access to packages between different linux distributions
>    or between linux and windows and mac and ... worlds) who is
>    responsible to keep an archive of available package gettable via
>    ocamlfind or whatevere else?
>    CPAN, APT, and other approaches work because someon set up an
>    official or de-facto-official archive (Well, APT also support other
>    repositories, but official one are the most used and trusted ...).

If this happens, maybe we can prevail on inria and the ocaml team to
make disk space available to us ?

> 3) ocaml packages are usually distributed as source packages and we have
>    not a standardized way to build and install them, the success of
>    CPAN, APT, are due to the facts that _or_ the distribution is in
>    binary form with standardadized file system sructure _or_ the
>    distribution is in source form with standardized compilation and
>    installation procedure

Yes, this is the problematic part.

Friendly,

Sven Luther
-------------------
To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr Archives: http://caml.inria.fr
Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs FAQ: http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/
Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners