Re: Buglet in ocaml-ldconf

[barbier@linuxfr.org (Denis Barbier)]

On Wed, May 15, 2002 at 06:41:34PM +0200, Remi VANICAT wrote:
[...]
> his suggestion :
> "So, to summarize, I strongly suggest the following approach for RPMs
> or Debian packages:
> - The main Caml package can add one or two lines to ld.conf,
>   e.g. /var/lib/ocaml/shlibs (for libraries installed by other packages)
>   and /usr/local/lib/ocaml/shlibs (for local stuff)
> - Packages for additional Caml libraries install their shared libraries
>   in /var/lib/ocaml/shlibs, either directly or via a symlink.
> "

Thanks for these explanations.
I am an OCaml newbie, so I may be fully wrong, but it does not seem to
solve all problems:
  * As pointed out by Matt, all tools should be consistent.
    The ocaml_packaging_policy document could be enhanced to deal with
    hand installed packages, so that all tools must conform to it.
    It would be simpler if OCaml itself had such a policy ;)
  * Proposed scheme do not handle versioned dependencies.
    There are no problem with Debian packages, which themselves
    have versioned dependencies, But if you compile and install
    your own modules and then upgrade OCaml, there are trouble.

> by the way he had also said :
> "(And, yes, I haven't followed this recommendation in some of the
> standard OCaml libraries (labltk) or some of my own extensions,
> but I've realized my error and intend to fix this in release 3.05.)
> "

Nice, if all libraries go into /var/lib/ocaml/shlibs/, ocaml-ldconf
becomes useless.  But again, it would be simpler if this policy
was dictated by OCaml itself.

IIRC Perl paths in Debian have changed at every Debian release (I am
of course not referring to change in directory names containing Perl
version numbers ;)), which is very confusing.  Hopefully their current
policy seems rather good, and it should not need to change in a near
future.  I hope OCaml will avoid this annoyance ;)
IMO an OCaml policy should focus on these issues:
  * Do we support simultaneous versions, as python does?
  * Installation path for core OCaml
  * Installation path for Debian OCaml packages
  * Installation path for local modules
  * How to upgrade OCaml when locally installed modules do exist?

This is not a criticism against the current ocaml_packaging_policy,
which is a nice document, but focuses only on packaging.

Denis


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