On Thu, Jun 14, 2007 at 09:11:11PM +0100, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote: > Hi Nicolas, > I've another question related to the packaging / distribution of ocaml > 3.10.0. > > ocamlbuild comes shipped as 3 executables: > - /usr/bin/ocamlbuild.byte > - /usr/bin/ocamlbuild.native > - /usr/bin/ocamlbuild > with the latter being the best among the first two. > > That's fine per se, but breaks what it seems like to be a "convention" > in the distribution of other ocaml tools. All compilers for example > follow the convention of no extension for the bytecode version and .opt > for the native version, some goes for the new camlp4 executables. > > Any reason for breaking this internal convention? Wouldn't it be better > to adopt it for ocamlbuild as well (which is what we are actually doing > in the Debian package)? I would really argue against reverting back to the old convention. On the contrary, I think it is time to switch to the new "weird" convention, which is actually the only reasonable one. It makes no sense to always have to check for *.opt versions of executables when one simply wants the fastest available version. A link as provided by ocamlbuild is the best solution for this most common use case. The old convention seems to be a historical accident as ocamlc was there before ocmalc.opt. However, why not use *.opt instead of *.native for some degree of backward compatibility? -- Chris Stork <> Support eff.org! <> http://www.ics.uci.edu/~cstork/ OpenPGP fingerprint: B08B 602C C806 C492 D069 021E 41F3 8C8D 50F9 CA2F
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