Re: proposal: new ocaml dirs schema

[jmarant@nerim.net (Jérôme Marant)]

Sven Luther <luther@dpt-info.u-strasbg.fr> writes:

>>   I'm not sure that it is a good idea. Do we really want multiple versions
>>   of ocaml at a time?
>
> If it does not cost much ?
>
> And i have got people asking about this, and it can make sense in some
> cases. In particular, this would enable me to package cvs snapshots.
..
> Mmm, i don't believe this would be a problem, if you build the package
> with a given version, then it will go in the ocamllibdir of that
> version, and another version of ocaml will not know about it.

  Well, keep in mind the problems Debian had with multiple Perl installed
  at a time and reasons why it changed. Python provides multiple versions
  but it also provides a dummy package pointing to the standard version of
  Python. I have a pretty good idea of problems that can arise since I
  followed such transitions.

  What must be dealt with: all ocaml binaries must be in sync: you
  must ensure that you'll never have ocamlc 3.04 with ocamlrun 3.06
  for instance ; you must *not* use alternatives, it was the cause of
  many problems with Perl.  The best way is the Python way as
  explained Stefano with a dummy ocaml and ocaml-base pointing to
  the standard version of ocaml.

  Cheers,

-- 
Jérôme Marant

http://marant.org