On Mon, May 27, 2002 at 12:28:46AM +0200, Denis Barbier wrote:
> Caml ML, and believe that you all forgot one point: some users may want
> to handle OCaml files without knowledge of OCaml and OCaml tools. This
Could you state more precisely what you mean with "handle OCaml files"?
IMO, these are the cases:
- use an ocaml program that requires the installation of a third part
runtime library (ocaml bytecode or a classical unix shared object)
=> if the program is debianized no problem: Depends field will solve
the problems for you
=> if the program is not debianized two subcase
- it depends on a debianized library
=> there is an evident problem of knowing which is the debian
package that contains the needed library
I've always experienced the same problem with Perl: suggestions
are appreciated but following the Perl way doesn't help
- it depend on a non debianized library
=> the problem may be the knowledge of which settings are to be
added at which configuration file. Perl solution is to search by
default in /usr/local perl library directory. I've already
agreeded to had /usr/local/ocaml/ to the default ocamlfind search
path and Sven can do the same in the default ld.conf file
- use of an ocaml library
=> how can a user want to use a library if he haven't the necessary
knowledge of OCaml?
I'm probably missing something, or perhaps I haven't understood what you
mean with "handle OCaml files" ...
> IMO Perl versioning system is helpful because if an admin wants to know
> if Perl module Foo is installed, he runs
> $ locate Foo
> /usr/local/lib/perl/5.6.0/Foo.pm
So, the requirements you are talking about include an easy way to know
the version of an installed ocaml module, right?
This is a good point but IMHO versioning ocaml is a too big effort to
achieve this result.
Anyway we have to think about a solution to this problem, the current
best solution we have is "ocamlfind list", but:
- we have to mention it somewhere
- we can evaluate the idea to 'force' ocaml debian packages (via debian
ocaml policy) to support findlib including a META file that we can
write and send to upstream authors where it isn't available.
IMO this is a really good idea and I like comments on this.
Even if we will choose a versioned solution, the locate way doesn't work
with ocaml, because a library may ship a lot of .cmo .cma files and not
a single .pm file as the majority of perl modules do. So you can't infer
that an OCaml library is installed only because one of the .cmo
installed match with the name of the library.
> But again, admin might not be an OCaml user. He must be told precisely
> what to do when upgrading OCaml core or installing a package.
Only if they are installing a non debianized ocaml library package and
again, if we mention /usr/lib/ocaml in ocamlfind.conf and ld.conf by
default they have to change no configuration files!
> I am not a Java addict, and thus am unable to fully understand what
Me too.
Cheers.
--
Stefano Zacchiroli - undergraduate student of CS @ Univ. Bologna, Italy
zack@cs.unibo.it | ICQ# 33538863 | http://www.cs.unibo.it/~zacchiro
"I know you believe you understood what you think I said, but I am not
sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant!" -- G.Romney
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