[Caml-list] Our shrinking Humps

[Sergey Goldgaber <sgoldgaber@yahoo.com>]

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The Caml Humps are just a list of links.  There seems to be no real
archive of contributed OCaml code.  Because of this the community is
losing these contributions as linked web pages disappear (either
because of web-site reorganization, or because the people maintaining
those personal web sites have moved on to something else).

One example is Benoît de Boursetty's PNM library, which doesn't seem to
be at http://www.stud.enst.fr/~debourse/projects.html any longer, as
the Humps maintain.  This seems like a valuable library, of practical
use to me right now.  I could try to track down Benoît de Boursetty, or
ask about this particular library on this list, but that is not an
effective long-term solution for every missing package case.

There are also all sorts of other libraries and applications which are
far too advanced for me to make use of right now, but which I could see
myself using a year or two down the road.  But with the web in flux the
way it is, it is not wise to rely on any particular web page still
being there after any length of time.

I could go through and manually download every individual piece of
software, but apart from being extraordinarily tedious, I would loose
all of the Hump's wonderful organization and descriptions.

I think what would be great if all of these packages were available in
a centralized, mirrored repository available for download.  That way,
ideally, people would be able to get every available package and burn
it to CDROM, distributing the entire archive for posterity.

I know there has been talk of a CPAN-like service, and think that would
be great as well.  However, nothing so complex is needed for a simple
centralized archive.  And it is an archive that is needed more. 
Otherwise the community loses code.

I wish I had a server and bandwidth to donate, or I would just do this
myself.  As it is I'm making an appeal to the community for solutions. 
If there are no individuals or corporate entities in the OCaml
community who are willing/able to provide the required resources,
perhaps we could look at something like ibiblio http://ibiblio.org/ 
Does anyone have any experience with this service?


  --Sergey


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