Bug#574887: ocsigen: Put XHTML.M in its own binary package

[Mehdi Dogguy <mehdi@debian.org>]

David MENTRE wrote:
> Hello Mehdi,
> 
> 2010/3/21 Mehdi Dogguy <mehdi@debian.org>:
>> Would it be possible to split it in a new binary package provinding
>> only XHTML.M to ease its installation and use?
> 
> Is this really necessary? 

Did I say so?

> What is "a lot of dependencies"?

Did you try to install it and see what it brings on disk?

If not, please read the following few lines and tell me if installing
192MB is worth it when I need only 100KB of them.

# aptitude install libocsigen-ocaml-dev
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Reading extended state information... Done
Initializing package states... Done
Writing extended state information... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  camlp4{a} libcryptgps-ocaml-dev{a} libcryptokit-ocaml{a}
libcryptokit-ocaml-dev{a} libfindlib-ocaml{a} libfindlib-ocaml-dev{a}
libgdbm-dev{a} liblwt-ocaml{a} liblwt-ocaml-dev{a} liblwt-ssl-ocaml-dev{a}
libncurses5-dev{a}
  libobrowser-ocaml-dev{a} libocamlnet-ocaml{a} libocamlnet-ocaml-dev{a}
libocsigen-ocaml{a} libocsigen-ocaml-dev libpcre-ocaml{a}
libpcre-ocaml-dev{a} libpcre3{a} libpcre3-dev{a} libpcrecpp0{a}
libreact-ocaml{a} libreact-ocaml-dev{a}
  libsqlite3-dev{a} libsqlite3-ocaml{a} libsqlite3-ocaml-dev{a}
libssl-dev{a} libssl-ocaml{a} libssl-ocaml-dev{a} libtext-ocaml{a}
libtext-ocaml-dev{a} libzip-ocaml{a} libzip-ocaml-dev{a} ocaml-base-nox{a}
ocaml-findlib{a}
  ocaml-interp{a} ocaml-nox{a} ocamlduce{a} ocamlduce-base{a} zlib1g-dev{a}
The following packages are RECOMMENDED but will NOT be installed:
  file ledit libjs-obrowser liblwt-ocaml-doc libnethttpd-ocaml-dev
libocamlnet-ocaml-doc libocsigen-ocaml-doc rlwrap sharutils
0 packages upgraded, 40 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 46.4MB/62.5MB of archives. After unpacking 192MB will be used.

This situation doesn't appear on my Desktop system (where I had to install
*only* 130MB) but on my server on which I don't want to install all these
libraries. Mainly, because I think that keeping a system as small as
possible and only with the required stuff (especially on a server) is a
sane approach.

The package splitting won't obviously reduce the installed size down to
100KB but will certainly reduce it by over the half (at least) which is a
real gain. Adding one binary package (or even 10) don't make the
dependency system complicated. It may complicate the packaging is a bit
but I think that these changes will be integrated upstream (maybe
partially) to ease such operations. Please note that package splitting in
Debian is done on request basis (when justified… which is the case here)
and not on "the number of people asking for it". Please also note that
I've set the severity to "minor".

If you're used to install libocsigen-ocaml-dev. Then, you'll see zero
difference. The only change you have to do in your sources is to replace
"ocsigen.xhtml" by "ocsigen_xhtml" when using ocamlfind.

My initial report may seem minimalistic and not properly argumented, but I
had a discussion offline about this issue with Stéphane (Ocsigen's
maintainer and part of Ocsigen's upstream team) who agreed (I think … but
that's not a binding claim) to fix that and asked me to bugreport it to
not forget about it.

> While Debian dependency system is nice, more packages mean a more
> complex system that need to be maintained.
> 

*We* will maintain it and keep it clean. If Stéphane needs some help to
maintain this packaging, I'm ready to help, as I always did in the OCaml Team.

Thanks for caring about OCaml packages,

-- 
Mehdi Dogguy مهدي الدڤي
mehdi@{dogguy.org,debian.org}