Re: [Caml-list] Camlp5 release 5.03

[Richard Jones <rich@annexia.org>]

On Wed, Nov 21, 2007 at 08:10:13PM +0000, Jon Harrop wrote:
> On Wednesday 21 November 2007 19:10, Richard Jones wrote:
> > The camlp5 package installs in $OCAMLLIBDIR/camlp5 so it doesn't
> > conflict with camlp4 from the base OCaml package, with an appropriate
> > findlib META file.  You need to make some adjustments to your Makefile
> > but those are usually very minor compared to rejigging your source to
> > be compatible with the new camlp4.
> 
> For me, this begs the obvious question: can the distros split off the OCaml 
> stdlib into a separate package so the community can improve it and 
> Debian/Ubuntu/Red Hat/Mac OS X/.. users can benefit from an improved version?

They could do this but I'm not sure they would do this.  There are a
few reasons I can think why Fedora wouldn't do it anyway:

(a) No program I know of can be compiled without stdlib, so splitting
compiler and stdlib is almost never a saving (from a pure packaging
point of view, ignoring, for now, possible enhancements).

(b) Fedora policy is not to diverge from upstream.  For example we
don't carry any patches in our packages except where those patches are
about to go upstream.  So making Fedora-specific enhancements to
OCaml's stdlib is against policy, and wouldn't be productive because
it would "lock in" to Fedora (in as much as open source can ever lock
you in).

  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageMaintainers/WhyUpstream

(c) I tend to think that the Extlib project has been successful
enhancing OCaml's stdlib without intruding on the stdlib.  Extlib
replaces stdlib modules and functions, but in a way which can be
carefully controlled and opted out from by the programmer.

  http://ocaml-lib.sourceforge.net/

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones
Red Hat