Re: About this ocaml versioning stuff
Selon Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr>:
> > No, this is wrong. Red Hat and Mandrake, the most widely used commercial
> > distro are using /usr/bin .
>
> Well, what about all the people who install stuff in any random place ?
> I think they way outnumber any redhat or mandrake users out there.
What is manualy installed doesn't count. We are discussing what's
installed through a package manager, e.g. dpkg or rpm.
> Also, like said, i would really like upstream to go this way also (for
> ocamlrun) because it is the only way which really makes sense, to be
> sure that you don't try to run your privately built bytecode programs
> with the wrong compiler once you upgraded your ocaml packages to a new
> and incompatible version.
But why using multiple ocaml at a time? If you want to change the ocaml
version, you need to rebuild binaries anyway. That's what we've been
doing so far.
> > > Also, notice that it is ever possible to run the bytecode executables as
> > > ocamlrun bytecode_file, and it will work whatever was descripted in the
> > > #! entry.
> >
> > This is stupid. You never run bytecode this way. +x chmod'ing the bytecode
> > should be enough.
>
> Why ? it beats editing the bytecode files to change that line by hand.
> There is no other way to doing it.
It is not required.
> > You _have to_ care for other distro because users of ocaml packages
> > may distribute binaries that _should_ be executable on other distro.
> > Debian _cares_ for compatibilities with others distros (that's what
> > LSB is for).
>
> Yes, sure, but not at all cost. There is no reason i should go into a
> rigid mode just because the other distros are not wanting to make some
Other distros don't need to. They provide only one Ocaml at a time.
> minor and small adjustement (a sylink from ocamlrun-<version> to
> ocamlrun should do). What does the LSB says about ocaml bytecode
> executables anyway ?
LSB was an example.
> > Why would the ocaml team support old versions of their compiler?
>
> Because it is more professional to do that ?
As long as you can freely download the latest version, there is no
reason to keep an old one around.
> > > But again, it was kind of an experiment, i want feedback, and maybe we
> > > should also get upstream opinion or the opinion of the community at
> > > large. Maxence, can you comment on this, maybe, or ask Xavier
> > > personnally about it ?
> >
> > You may need a rationale before asking ...
>
> Well, you can keep old (possibly closed source) bytecode programs
> arounds with a minimal runtime system (ocamlrun and the stublibs) and
> install the new version beside of it. Is that not a rationale enough
> reason for it ? Even a reason why debian should do it ? And i think we
None I think. One ocaml per debian release sounds sane to me.
> should care about this more than other distribs compatibility, even our
Compatibility is important for software authors, those who ship
binaries, I said.
> social contract says so. And anyway, we are the vanguard of ocaml
> packaging, i guess others will follow suit if we do something :)))
I think more and more of providing my own version of ocaml packages ...
--
Jérôme Marant
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