Re: [Caml-list] OCaml packaging problems: findlib helps!

[Blair Zajac <blair@orcaware.com>]

Gerd Stolpmann wrote:
> 
> Hello list,
> 
> I have prepared an experimental version of findlib (download see below)
> that allows users to store DLLs into a shared directory, called "libexec".
> As you may know, findlib organizes packages by directory. For example,
> an installation with three packages X, Y, and Z could look like:
> 
> /usr/local/lib/ocaml/site-lib/X/<files>
> /usr/local/lib/ocaml/site-lib/Y/<files>
> /usr/local/lib/ocaml/site-lib/Z/<files>
> 
> Previous versions of findlib put DLLs simply into the package directories,
> and findlib tried to update the ld.conf file (which may fail because of
> missing file permissions). A similar solution is also used by the Debian
> packagers.
> 
> There are some problems with it:
> - There are scalability problems when really many directories are in ld.conf
> - Package management systems like dpkg and rpm must use postinstall scripts
>   which makes packaging more difficult
> - There is a conflict between dpkg/rpm packages and additional manual
>   installations: Who is responsible for which line in ld.conf?
> - Name clashes are hard to detect (e.g. X and Y use both dllfoo.so)
> 
> The experimental version of findlib recognizes a special directory libexec:
> 
> /usr/local/lib/ocaml/site-lib/libexec/<DLL files>
> 
> The simple existence of this directory causes that all files with the suffixes
> .so and .dll are copied into this directory (no symlinks). Of course, this breaks
> the current way of representing the ownership of files. In previous versions,
> all files in the package directory for X are owned by X. This is simple,
> and works for everything else very well. In libexec, there are now .owner files,
> e.g. for dllfoo.so findlib creates a second file dllfoo.so.owner, containing
> only one line with the name of the owner.

Gerd,

What about the possibility of having multiple owners for the same library?
I can see the case (in fact I'm going to build a module that does this)
that segments a single shared library into multiple modules.  Then I'd
want multiple owners for the same library.

Are there any other tricks I need to be careful of to make sure that
this works?

On an unrelated point, can you modify the Makefile to define a new
variable, say DEBUG, that is set to either -g or nothing and replace
all the -g's with $(DEBUG)?  This would trim down the size of the
generated files.  This could also be added to configure as a -debug
command line option.  I can send in a patch if requested.

Best,
Blair

--
Blair Zajac <blair@orcaware.com>
Web and OS performance plots - http://www.orcaware.com/orca/
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