[Caml-list] The DLL-hell of O'Caml

["Mattias Waldau" <mattias.waldau@abc.se>]

(THIS IS NOT A BUG REPORT ON WDIALOG, WDIALOG IS JUST AN EXAMPLE!)

I wanted to try WDialog made by Gerd Stolpmann.

Gerd is one of the more productive Ocaml programmers, 
who generates good and documentated libraries.

On my linux-machine I use the CDK with ocaml-3.03ALPHA.

This is the installation history:
1. Needs Ocaml 3.03 -> updated CDK using CVS (there are no tarballs
but I have a broadband-connection).
2. Ocamlnet missing -> downloaded ocamlnet-0.92
3. Failed to install ocamlnet, since the PCRE in the CDK seems to
be to old.
4. Installed a new PCRE.
5. Tried to install ocamlnet again, however failed with 
	"unbound type constructor Mimestring.s_param"

   Probably something else is too old...I got bored...
   ...never got back to try to install WDialog....

---------

The above history is the reason I started using the CDK,
in many cases using libraries that depend on other
libraries is almost impossible without the CDK. Too much 
time is spent on downloading and compiling.

I know 3 solutions to the problem:
1. CDK
2. Gerd invented findlib to solve the above problem.
3. Adding good packages to the standard distribution,
   so that mostly packages doesn't depend on other
   packages, but on packages in the standard
   distribution. (But very few if any new packages
   are added to the distribution.)


There are probably more solutions. I would call this 
problem a show stopper, since it prevents user to use
good libraries. 

We need a solution. Maybe a CPAN-like solution? 
In the Ocaml-CPAN it could either be source code, or
compile binaries (I can live without native code, at
least when experimenting with other peoples libraries.)

/mattias


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