Re: [Caml-list] GODI is shutting down

[Gabriel Scherer <gabriel.scherer@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Jul 23, 2013 at 12:32 AM, Anil Madhavapeddy <anil@recoil.org> wrote:
> Instead of doing such a heroic solo job (which I'm not being funny about --
> it really is a lot of work), why not spend the time to open up GODI as well?
>
> Most of the OPAM package descriptions come from *other people*. We just review
> them, give feedback if necessary, click the merge button and fix errors that
> creep through.  And even that takes up a surprising amount of time...

To be fair, I never felt GODI to be a closed system. There are in fact
a reasonable number that were packaged by someone else than Gerd (see
http://godi.camlcity.org/godi/packages.html , the "released by" field
on packages; several were packaged by Virgile Prevosto, for example).
It's more that the packaging for GODI is a bit more difficult, and
probably just as importantly as there never was a strong community
dynamics to contribute to GODI packaging. It is now the norm that
everyone should write a META file for ocamlfind, and it is becoming
the norm to package for OPAM, but GODI probably came too early at a
time where developers expected distributions to do the packaging work
(which Debian and Fedora still do superbly), and there never was much
of a community dynamics for GODI packaging.

And implementation-wise, I have had the pleasure of interacting with
Gerd a couple of time to discuss possible changes to ocamlfind, and I
did not get the impression that the project was "closed"; I'm quite
sure anyone could contribute (or have contributed) to GODI with a
well-justified, good-looking patch.

On Tue, Jul 23, 2013 at 12:32 AM, Anil Madhavapeddy <anil@recoil.org> wrote:
> On 22 Jul 2013, at 22:21, "Gerd Stolpmann" <info@gerd-stolpmann.de> wrote:
>
>> There is also another point that was driving me mad in the past weeks,
>> namely missing respect from the OPAM guys. Given the fact that OPAM is
>> only a thin layer around ocamlfind (and guess who wrote it), and given the
>> fact that GODI was pioneering in many fields, I was expecting nicer
>> wordings, and less dumb campaigning ("we have 400 packages, and you only
>> 170"). OPAM is only harvesting what I seeded many years ago.
>
> So when you describe the virtues of GODI, you call it 'advocating', and when
> Fabrice describes the virtues of OPAM, it's 'dumb campaigning'. This is
> splendidly reminiscent of US politics!
>
> I don't find any of this source-based package management particularly novel.
> I've worked in the OpenBSD ports tree since the late 90s, and it's way ahead
> of either OPAM or GODI. I think where OPAM contributes most over any other
> source manager are the three points on the front page that I iterated earlier
> in this thread:
>
> - multiple simultaneous compiler installations.
> - flexible package constraints.
> - a Git-friendly development workflow.
>
> The first is very useful, but PATH munging is certainly not novel. The Git
> workflow is heavily inspired by Homebrew.
>
> The constraint solver has seen a tremendous amount of work though:
> there's one version built into OPAM (tweaked relentlessly by Thomas with
> heuristics), and the external CUDF solvers from the Mancoosi project which
> are magically accurate (but not yet integrated by default until they are
> packaged on different repositories).
>
> Anyway, I'm not a GODI user, but I think you're doing a disservice to your
> loyal GODI users if you shut it down in a huff. There are features (notably
> Windows support) where it'll take OPAM some time to catch up.  I think that
> the real reason that you're shutting it is nothing to do with "respect", but
> is good old-fashioned burnt-out:
>
>> Although there are still a lot of GODI users, it is unavoidable to shut GODI down due to lack of supporters, especially package developers. I was more or less alone in the past months, and my time contingent will not allow it to do the upgrade to OCaml 4.01 alone (when it is released).
>
> Instead of doing such a heroic solo job (which I'm not being funny about --
> it really is a lot of work), why not spend the time to open up GODI as well?
>
> Most of the OPAM package descriptions come from *other people*. We just review
> them, give feedback if necessary, click the merge button and fix errors that
> creep through.  And even that takes up a surprising amount of time...
>
> -anil
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