On Sun, Feb 08, 2009 at 05:00:53PM +0100, Stéphane Glondu wrote:
> > - please rely on @OCamlStdlibDir@ substitution variable rather than on
> > /usr/lib/ocaml/@OCamlABI@, as the former will enable us to switch
> > our directory layout more easily if we decide to
>
> What about doing this right now? I mean, for the first upload of OCaml
> 3.11 to unstable. We will have a period of OCaml breakage anyway, so
> IMHO it's the right time to make the switch. The versioned library dir
> is not really relevant since we never provide several versions of OCaml....
I was thinking about doing this in two steps, but let's be clear for
the sake of all the readers.
The proposal is to switch from having `ocamlc -where` =
/usr/lib/ocaml/<ABI>/ to plain /usr/lib/ocaml/.
The rationale is partly historical. In the beginning we used to hope
in having multiple version of OCaml installed at the same time, hence
we went for versioned directories. Now it is rather evident that it
would be quite a waste of resources to have multiple version of OCaml
supported, and also it is simply not useful for OCaml
users. Apparently most of us/them just care about having the latest
OCaml and nothing else.
Hence I do not see any reason to keep a versioned directory scheme,
which just clutter the filesystem with no apparent good reason. Does
any of you see any reason for keeping it?
Now (_if_ we agree on the switch), the questions is how to do
that. While it is true that we can go ahead right ahead with the
change, I was trying to put as few obstacles as possible in having
3.11 in unstable, for two reasons:
1) due to the delays in the Lenny releases, our users have been
waiting wrt the 3.11 release quite a lot already, I don't want to
add extra potential delaying factors
2) if all goes well, Lenny will be released this week-end, we still
have some work to do for getting 3.11 in shape (I guess), I thought
it was enough already
Still, it is true that if we don't do the switch now, we will have
either to do that contextually to 3.12 or in a specific
transition. Which might be good (the specific transition) as we can
use it to regulate all things not related to upstream, but
Debian-specific.
So, my preference is still in not doing that now, but rather do a
specific transition in the Lenny time frame. I'd like to receive
comments on that.
Cheers.
--
Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7
zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -<>- http://upsilon.cc/zack/
Dietro un grande uomo c'è ..| . |. Et ne m'en veux pas si je te tutoie
sempre uno zaino ...........| ..: |.... Je dis tu à tous ceux que j'aime
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