From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from mail2-relais-roc.national.inria.fr (mail2-relais-roc.national.inria.fr [192.134.164.83]) by sympa.inria.fr (Postfix) with ESMTPS id E51D27F0A3 for ; Tue, 1 Sep 2015 15:47:29 +0200 (CEST) IronPort-PHdr: 9a23:WS4xCBDXkXgnmug3tON8UyQJP3N1i/DPJgcQr6AfoPdwSP7zpMbcNUDSrc9gkEXOFd2CrakU16yO6+u8ACQp2tWojjMrSNR0TRgLiMEbzUQLIfWuLgnFFsPsdDEwB89YVVVorDmROElRH9viNRWJ+iXhpQAbFhi3DwdpPOO9QteU1JTrkbjqsMGKKyxzxxODIppKZC2sqgvQssREyaBDEY0WjiXzn31TZu5NznlpL1/A1zz158O34YIxu38I46Fp34d6XK77Z6U1S6BDRHRjajhtpZ6jiR6WdhcO/nsVVGghvR5PBQTYpEXhQprpsgP1su171DTcO8DqG+MaQzOnuohiQgXphSNPDDU5/XvakIQkg6tRuhOso1pkyI7ZeoyPHPV7d6LZO9gdQDwSDY5qSyVdD9bkPMM0BO0bMLMd9tGlqg== Authentication-Results: mail2-smtp-roc.national.inria.fr; spf=None smtp.pra=gabriel.scherer@gmail.com; spf=Pass smtp.mailfrom=gabriel.scherer@gmail.com; spf=None smtp.helo=postmaster@mail-ig0-f176.google.com Received-SPF: None (mail2-smtp-roc.national.inria.fr: no sender authenticity information available from domain of gabriel.scherer@gmail.com) identity=pra; client-ip=209.85.213.176; receiver=mail2-smtp-roc.national.inria.fr; envelope-from="gabriel.scherer@gmail.com"; x-sender="gabriel.scherer@gmail.com"; x-conformance=sidf_compatible Received-SPF: Pass (mail2-smtp-roc.national.inria.fr: domain of gabriel.scherer@gmail.com designates 209.85.213.176 as permitted sender) identity=mailfrom; client-ip=209.85.213.176; receiver=mail2-smtp-roc.national.inria.fr; envelope-from="gabriel.scherer@gmail.com"; x-sender="gabriel.scherer@gmail.com"; x-conformance=sidf_compatible; x-record-type="v=spf1" Received-SPF: None (mail2-smtp-roc.national.inria.fr: no sender authenticity information available from domain of postmaster@mail-ig0-f176.google.com) identity=helo; client-ip=209.85.213.176; receiver=mail2-smtp-roc.national.inria.fr; envelope-from="gabriel.scherer@gmail.com"; x-sender="postmaster@mail-ig0-f176.google.com"; x-conformance=sidf_compatible X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: A0AyAQCtq+VVm7DVVdFdhFgGgx2vN4tTAQmEOoM4AoEzBzgUAQEBAQEBAQEQAQEBAQEGCwsJIS6CHYIHAQEEEhEdARsdAQMMBgULBwYCAiYCAiIBEQEFAQ4OBhMUDod2AQMSpXeBLz4xi0CBbIJ5ikkKGScNVoQyAQEBAQEFAQEBAQEBFgEFDoEUhVKEfIRYMweCaYFDBY1kh12MdZkgEiOBFxeELh4zgk0BAQE X-IPAS-Result: A0AyAQCtq+VVm7DVVdFdhFgGgx2vN4tTAQmEOoM4AoEzBzgUAQEBAQEBAQEQAQEBAQEGCwsJIS6CHYIHAQEEEhEdARsdAQMMBgULBwYCAiYCAiIBEQEFAQ4OBhMUDod2AQMSpXeBLz4xi0CBbIJ5ikkKGScNVoQyAQEBAQEFAQEBAQEBFgEFDoEUhVKEfIRYMweCaYFDBY1kh12MdZkgEiOBFxeELh4zgk0BAQE X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="5.17,449,1437429600"; d="scan'208";a="175608169" Received: from mail-ig0-f176.google.com ([209.85.213.176]) by mail2-smtp-roc.national.inria.fr with ESMTP/TLS/AES128-GCM-SHA256; 01 Sep 2015 15:47:29 +0200 Received: by igbni9 with SMTP id ni9so758296igb.0 for ; Tue, 01 Sep 2015 06:47:28 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20120113; h=mime-version:in-reply-to:references:from:date:message-id:subject:to :cc:content-type:content-transfer-encoding; bh=fpIF5O0u/hN3oAqkhGQBPUFJnAOmFJRJSXvkPLysH9k=; b=SZap3uvYwanNVQKFpjB3E0NcFe1up1qL4jiPbZFFI21Hap8b/B+JtNqRDmPY5NkZEn 47xZ0jQ15Trob/40XXFKSmEuT7fIufIOr3EPgbIyIkqmpFOlqd0TzbpMKHEP7VAaLvs3 5szBh8yAQVpSCGQqnNOmJU7rKLXdL7Hk5jyetyNzbDf/3JXc5Jtn9CX5RnXgZHcG3dFJ ra1ZQxBoJipPtzKsgePXOt0olM7EqhqwV72xm7nqBRaNVo816uquA3hXxkBhPYDmozOn X+jNE+8aWfgZWL/NW7G41XTvbKtI9Yj2PHgQEzT3gJiJhMJi8tHQSm9gUgeSKnKbsXmY HcuQ== X-Received: by 10.50.122.36 with SMTP id lp4mr2683422igb.37.1441115247869; Tue, 01 Sep 2015 06:47:27 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.79.68.132 with HTTP; Tue, 1 Sep 2015 06:46:48 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <55E47B7E.6050901@glondu.net> References: <1C02B1E2-D17D-4008-998E-B17048C62DFA@gmail.com> <55E47B7E.6050901@glondu.net> From: Gabriel Scherer Date: Tue, 1 Sep 2015 06:46:48 -0700 Message-ID: To: =?UTF-8?Q?St=C3=A9phane_Glondu?= Cc: "caml-list@inria.fr" Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Subject: Re: [Caml-list] We need a rich standard library distributed with OCaml, really On Mon, Aug 31, 2015 at 9:06 AM, St=C3=A9phane Glondu wr= ote: > And "install OPAM first" is not a very satisfactory way of > installing some software written in OCaml in a stable environment. I wholly agree. My personal practice is to use OPAM to set up *development* environment(s) for OCaml hacking, and rely on the system package manager to install any end-user software (including those written in OCaml). For example, I do not recommend installing Coq through OPAM (unless one need experimental versions or plans to contribute to Coq's development), but rather through the package manager. It remains, though, that we cannot assume that everyone is using a distribution with a good OCaml packaging story (I know only of Fedora and Debian although I haven't tried OSX distributions or the BSD ports -- on other systems I've been a satisfied user of GODI for a while), so for a long time the difficulty of *some* users and developers to install OCaml (development) libraries effectively discouraged people to rely on third-party libraries, and I think it is not the case anymore. I believe the Debian QA process is very useful and important. For example, the handling of software license is still in its infancy in OPAM, while there is a well-established checking process which is part of Debian integration; I mentioned before that legal issues discouraged some industrial users from using third-party libraries, but I think reasonable users should feel rather safe using Debian-packaged software. The OCaml community also benefits from the fact that many consider "supports all the official Debian packages" as a milestone (when evaluating the readiness of a new hardware architecture for example), and will thus foster development across all of the Debian user-space, including packaged OCaml projects. More generally, we benefit from a lot of patches and platform support developed by packagers for various operating system (BSD port comes to mind), and this is part of the continuing added value of packaging OCaml software for many systems. On Mon, Aug 31, 2015 at 9:06 AM, St=C3=A9phane Glondu wr= ote: > Le 27/08/2015 10:17, Gabriel Scherer a =C3=A9crit : >> Depending on external libraries used to be a problem when there was no >> consensus on OCaml packaging (no longer than a few years ago people >> where reluctant to even use ocamlfind). We now have a reasonable >> consensus on a packaging story, and installing third-party libraries >> has never been as easy as it is today -- except on Windows, meh. >> I think you should embrace the idea of depending on software outside >> the OCaml distribution. > > Depending on a multitude of external libraries makes packaging more > difficult. I am talking about "system" packaging (deb, rpm...) here, not > OPAM. And "install OPAM first" is not a very satisfactory way of > installing some software written in OCaml in a stable environment. > > > Cheers, > > -- > St=C3=A9phane