Re: GODI and Debian?
On Mon, 2006-03-13 at 20:19 -0500, Eric Cooper wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 13, 2006 at 12:58:15PM +0100, Matthieu Dubuget wrote:
> > What can I do, as a Debian and Ocaml user, if I want to work with recent
> > stuff on my Debian stable, without breaking everything?
>
> Stefano Zacchiroli built Sarge backports of the 3.09.0 OCaml release:
> http://lists.debian.org/debian-ocaml-maint/2005/11/msg00301.html
> Not the most recent stuff, but close.
>
> > An idea that comes to mind would be to use Godi, instead or beneath
> > debian packages. Is it possible? And what would be the interaction
> > between the two systems? Especially regarding standard (I mean not
> > specific to ocam) packages like gtk?
>
> I can't answer this, since I prefer to have all my packages handled in
> the "One True Debian Way" :-)
GODI installs into /usr/local or wherever you tell it.
Therefore GODI will not break Debian: another user not
putting /usr/local/* into PATH, LD_LIBRARY_PATH, etc etc,
just won't see your Debian stuff.
The reverse problem is slightly harder, since Ocaml is
sloppily built from packaging viewpoint. Typically when
using a foreign Ocaml, it will correctly find its own
pervasives and libraries.
Gerd can tell you more about how findlib handles this.
The danger comes when Godi packages fail to completely cast
the Debian install into a shadow .. and you use bits of it by
mistake.
This is not nearly as bad on Unix as the situation I have
to deal with: I have THREE builds of Ocaml on Windows:
Cygwin, MinGW and MSVC++. Oh, and TWO MSVC++ installations
(since I run XP64).
Unfortunately 'the One True Debian Way' is very bad at handling
Ocaml because every release of the compiler write off all
generated code: no libraries or bytecode are valid anymore,
and all must be recompiled.
GODI on the other hand is designed to handle this properly,
since it is a SOURCE code based system.
NEITHER system automatically recompiles end user code.
IMHO this is just a bug in Ocaml itself. Felix, Python,
and most other modern compilation systems automatically
recompile as required.
There was some talk on debian-ocaml-maint of switching over
the Ocaml packages to be source code based too.
As mentioned, this will never solve the real problem:
end user code. (Its just fine for building one or two
executables/libraries :)
--
John Skaller <skaller at users dot sourceforge dot net>
Async PL, Realtime software consultants
Checkout Felix: http://felix.sourceforge.net
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