Bug#827518: ocaml: missing dependency on libncurses-dev
Hi,
Thank you for your bugreport and apologies for not getting back to you
sooner.
On 17/06/2016 12:07, whitequark wrote:
> Source: ocaml
> Severity: normal
>
> Dear Maintainer,
>
> The ocaml package, as well as its sister packages ocaml-nox, ocaml-base and
> ocaml-base-nox, are missing a dependency on libncurses-dev. This is apparent
> when trying to build a bytecode executable with an embedded custom runtime:
>
> $ touch t.ml
> $ ocamlc t.ml -custom
> /usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lcurses
> collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
> File "t.ml", line 1:
> Error: Error while building custom runtime system
>
> Because of this, packages that assume that they can build a custom runtime
> whenever they can build regular bytecode executables, which is in my opinion
> a fair assumption, break. A notable case where this presents a significant
> problem is when the OPAM package manager is used with a system OCaml compiler.
> Many notable packages, e.g. ocamlfind and lwt, build custom runtimes, and
> currently the OPAM packages have to be altered to either disable that, when
> possible, or else add an explicit dependency on ncurses-dev, through
> the depext mechanism, which integrates OPAM with APT.
>
I acknowledge the problem. IIUI, the fix you're looking for is to move the
dependency on libncurses5-dev from ocaml-nox to ocaml-base-nox. But this raises
another question, why ocaml-base-nox is used to compile packages. Its
description contains the following bits:
This package contains only the runtime system needed to run bytecode
executables that do not use the graphics library. The 'ocaml' package
contains the full development suite of Objective Caml.
while ocaml-nox's description has:
This package contains everything needed to develop OCaml applications
that do not require the graphics library.
So, if you are trying to build ocaml binaries, ocaml-nox should be preferred
over ocaml-base-nox.
What do you think?
Regards,
--
Mehdi
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