Re: About this ocaml versioning stuff
Selon Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr>:
> > What is manualy installed doesn't count. We are discussing what's
> > installed through a package manager, e.g. dpkg or rpm.
>
> Well, why not account for all the people not doing it.
Because we are at the packaging level, not the manual installation
level.
> > > 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.
>
> Ok, how you solve the special case of a binary only bytecode program
> you have installed which is not buildable with the new version ?
I submit patches upstream.
> > Other distros don't need to. They provide only one Ocaml at a time.
>
> I use distro foo ocaml installation, compile my packages, give the
> binary version to my client, and then get hit by a truck, or maybe my
> harddisk dies or whatever. Once distrib foo updates ocaml to the new
> version, this tool will become totally unusable.
You should have made backups.
> > As long as you can freely download the latest version, there is no
> > reason to keep an old one around.
>
> That you can see. I see at least one more than the one we spoke about
> earlier, and that is to have while not all programas/libraries are
> ported to the new version, maybe because there is some huge
> incompatibility to the new version or something like that. OR you
> thousands of coq stuff that only works with the old coq whihc needs the
> old version of ocaml.
Then, the code needs to be modified.
> > None I think. One ocaml per debian release sounds sane to me.
>
> Me too, but now is the time to discuss this with an open mind, which is
> what i asked at first. There is good reasons and bad reasons for it,
> let's examin it and make the choice based on it.
We used to discuss this a lot in the past.
> > > should care about this more than other distribs compatibility, even our
> >
> > Compatibility is important for software authors, those who ship
> > binaries, I said.
>
> And support of older versions is not ? Those who ship binaries ?
There isn't any problem with it. Older versions are ship with
stable Debian releases. Unstable and testing don't count.
> > > 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 ...
>
> Why, there is no decision taken yet, we are just examining the
> possibilities right now, try to look at it with an open mind.
This is what I did so far, but I've never been convinced.
--
Jérôme Marant
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