Re: switching to `ocamlc -where` = /usr/lib/ocaml/
Hello Stefano,
On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 10:07, Stefano Zacchiroli <zack@debian.org> wrote:
> I was thinking about doing this in two steps, but let's be clear for
> the sake of all the readers.
Thanks! ;-)
> 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.
More specifically, only a single version of OCaml is available in a
Debian (and thus Ubuntu) release. But if several OCaml compilers where
available, I assume people would use them, if only to make one's
software compatible with several OCaml releases. Of course, I
understand that it would consume too much resources to maintain all
OCaml infrastructure over several OCaml versions.
BTW, isn't the versioned scheme useful during transitions in sid?
> 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?
Well, the versioned directory scheme is useful for the /usr/local
part, when you compile your own libraries and need to upgrade them
after an OCaml compiler upgrade. I think this is much more clean with
versioned directories. I don't know if it is related or not.
> 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.
_If_ such a switch is made, the above proposal seems much cleaner to me.
Sincerely yours,
david
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