OCAML Debian package
Dear Sven and Fernando,
You have both expressed an interest in packaging a more recent version of
OCAML than the one that is presently in Debian.
This is a good idea but you should of course contact the maintainer of the
existing OCAML package, version 1.05-2, before going further! It is
Christophe Le Bars <clebars@debian.org>. Allow some weeks for the reply.
That a package is a year old does not necesarily signify that it is
obsolete: it may have been the most stable version, the most consistently
documented, etc. Maybe the system is so different that it should have a
new name so the two can coexist? There may be many issues to discuss!
Also make sure that the packages produced by OCAML will still compile,
first of all the mmm package.
A strong argument in favour of having a new version of OCAML might be that
there are *new* programs available, written in OCAML, that can also be
packaged. In that respect make sure you obtain full details about whether
programs *compiled* with OCAML are DFSG-free so they can be put in the main
Debian distribution. If this can be ensured then you should push for it.
Also you should be ready to prepare your package with whatever is necessary
to compile it on non-i386 systems if this is at all possible.
That said, I do believe that an updated OCAML in potato will be a good
thing. Even if it has to be in non-free. (In fact, we should keep the
pressure up on INRIA to change over to the GPL since there is a strong
movement inside INRIA to do this with Bernard Lang among its chief
advocates.)
Sincerely,
Kristoffer
--
Kristoffer Høgsbro Rose, phd, prof.associé <http://www.ens-lyon.fr/~krisrose>
addr: LIP, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, 46 Allée d'Italie, F-69364 Lyon 7
phone: +33(0)4 7272 8642, fax +33(0)4 7272 8080 <Kristoffer.Rose@ENS-Lyon.FR>
pgp f-p: A4D3 5BD7 3EC5 7CA2 924E D21D 126B B8E0 <krisrose@{debian,tug}.org>
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