Re: [Caml-list] OCaml on the BSD port system

[michael.le_barbier@laposte.net (Michaël Le Barbier)]

"ivan chollet" <ivan.chollet@laposte.net> writes:

> I would like to point out that OCaml is not updated on a regular basis in
> the FreeBSD port system. It seems like the maintainer is not maintaining
> it anymore. Does someone have any plan about updating the port? It would
> be good to use 3.10 on Gentoo, FreeBSD, Darwin,... don't know how many
> users are really concerned about this though.

Hi,

I am also an happy FreeBSD+OCaml and user. I have recently worked on some
OCaml related stuff, and tried to reach the OCaml port maintainer for
some reason. He did not answer at all; maybe will you have better
luck than I had.

In case he is now too busy to maintain OCaml, someone should take the
things up ... I am interested in this, however I will not do it now
because I am graduating, and you know ... :)

I have a very small experience in porting software for FreeBSD, for
common software, this is a fairly straightforward task, explained in
the Porter's Handbook. Porting OCaml could be more complicated, since:

 1 OCaml provides an interface to the Unix system, to Berkeley
   databases and threads, and there may be some differences between
   FreeBSD and Linuses in these areas;

 2 special provision could be needed in order to deal with shared
   libraries that other ports may install.

For 1, it could be sufficient to reuse work of the previous porter;
I have zero-knowledge regarding 2 but people that worked on it in
Debian (Stefano Zacchiroli et al.) may give a word of advise here.
-- 
Happy hacking,
Michaël LB