From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.1.3 (2006-06-01) on yquem.inria.fr X-Spam-Level: * X-Spam-Status: No, score=1.1 required=5.0 tests=AWL,SPF_NEUTRAL autolearn=disabled version=3.1.3 X-Original-To: caml-list@yquem.inria.fr Delivered-To: caml-list@yquem.inria.fr Received: from mail4-relais-sop.national.inria.fr (mail4-relais-sop.national.inria.fr [192.134.164.105]) by yquem.inria.fr (Postfix) with ESMTP id 995D8BC6C for ; Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:05:16 +0100 (CET) X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: AgAAAOjAnkfAXQImh2dsb2JhbACQHgEBAQgKKZ1d X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.25,269,1199660400"; d="asc'?scan'208";a="21933448" Received: from discorde.inria.fr ([192.93.2.38]) by mail4-smtp-sop.national.inria.fr with ESMTP; 29 Jan 2008 15:05:16 +0100 Received: from mail1-relais-roc.national.inria.fr (mail1-relais-roc.national.inria.fr [192.134.164.82]) by discorde.inria.fr (8.13.6/8.13.6) with ESMTP id m0TE5Cl8007480 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=RC4-SHA bits=128 verify=OK) for ; Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:05:15 +0100 X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.25,269,1199660400"; d="asc'?scan'208";a="7378685" Received: from peray.inria.fr (HELO ausone.inria.fr) ([128.93.8.98]) by mail1-relais-roc.national.inria.fr with SMTP; 29 Jan 2008 15:05:15 +0100 Received: by ausone.inria.fr (sSMTP sendmail emulation); Tue, _d Jan 2008 15:04:11 +0100 From: "Nicolas Pouillard" Cc: Berke Durak , caml-list Subject: Re: [Caml-list] [OSR] Ports-like package management system To: Yaron Minsky References: <479F0664.2070706@exalead.com> In-Reply-To: Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:04:11 +0100 Message-Id: <1201615366-sup-9022@port-ext5.ensta.fr> User-Agent: Sup/git Content-Type: multipart/signed; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="=-1201615451-786309-27517-3357-3-="; micalg="pgp-sha1" MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Miltered: at discorde with ID 479F3298.000 by Joe's j-chkmail (http://j-chkmail . ensmp . fr)! X-Spam: no; 0.00; yaron:01 haskell's:01 berke:01 durak:01 berke:01 durak:01 ocaml:01 markus:01 non-trivial:01 flags:01 compilations:01 gentoo:01 cvs:01 ocaml:01 haskell:01 X-Attachments: cset="UTF-8" type="application/pgp-signature" name="signature.asc" name="signature.asc" --=-1201615451-786309-27517-3357-3-= Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Excerpts from Yaron Minsky's message of Tue Jan 29 14:47:03 +0100 2008: > Another thought: the discussion here is essentially about cloning > haskell's cabal system. Seems like a good place to look for inspiration. I also think that many ideas can be borrowed from cabal since it's quite recent and have close requirements. > On Jan 29, 2008, at 5:56 AM, Berke Durak > wrote: > > > Hello, > > > > Following Markus's message, discussions with Nicolas Pouillard and > > Sylvain Le Gall and others, and of course my previous work in the EDOS > > project, here are some thoughts about package management systems > > (PMSs) for Ocaml. > > > > First, the PMSs of Linux distributions are perfectly adequate for end > > users and administrators having to deploy and manage identical > > packages accross multiple machines. These are very complex systems > > including a substantial social part. > > > > But they are not very suitable for developers. > > > > As Markus pointed out, developers cannot go thru a packaging step to > > test the result of a change, much less wait for the fine Debian team. > > > > One reason is that most developers, including myself, cannot be > > bothered to package software for a Linux distribution, because correct > > packaging is complex and requires adherence to a set of rules must be > > remembered and which cannot all be checked by software. As packaging > > is not done very often, you tend to forget those rules, and that is > > why we have people who package often to not forget the rules: > > maintainers. Without maintainers, we would be in a world of pain to > > install any piece of non-trivial software and we are thankful to them. > > > > But developers absolutely need to be able to work on multiple versions > > of the same software component at once, patch those versions or > > compile them with unusual flags, and often use the absolutely latest > > unpackaged version. And that is the second reason why the Debian or > > Red Hat PMSs are not adequate. They have a single global state per > > system, which includes the installed files, and the package database, > > and cannot handle multiple versions of the same package, nor multiple > > compilations of the same version. (This also applies to Gentoo.) > > > > We thus need versions, and lots of them! We need to base our > > developer packages on a version control system, in the style of BSD > > ports. BSD ports are usually based on CVS, sometimes on Subversion. > > As we are looking to increase collaboration, having a single point of > > contention is a serious limitations of these centralized systems; > > we'll prefer more recent "distributed" version control system. > > > > Of available distributed VCSs with a serious user base, we have Darcs, > > Mercurial and Git. > > > > Basing a PMS for Ocaml on a VCS written in Haskell would violate the > > ``Trading with the Enemy'' act. Moreover Darcs has some performance > > problems of its own. > > > > Mercurial (Hg) is written in Python extended in C for performance. It > > is quite friendly and works well under Windows. However, its > > developers are not as elite as Git's, its merging features are less > > advanced and Python sux0rz. > > > > I have been using Hg for the past few months and been quite happy with > > it, but then I was mostly working alone. Git is certainly as good as > > Mercurial for that kind of usage and, as it is written in pure C, I > > advocate its use. Until someone writes a VCS in Ocaml, that is. > > > > Let's get back to the subject. BSD ports are also based on make, > > whose main limitation, the static dependency graph, has been addressed > > in ocamlbuild. I know there is Omake, but I think it suffers from the > > ``Yet Another Turing-Complete Language'' syndrome. > > > > So I am calling for a solution based on a ports-like system but based > > on a distributed VCS and on an improved ocamlbuild. > > > > Assume you are writing a program FOO and want to use a package BAR > > available from bar.org. You tell ocamlbuild by adding some tag such > > as > > > > : require(http://bar.org/repository/) > > > > And when you run ocamlbuild, it automatically checks out a copy of > > BAR, compiles and loads its myocamlbuild.ml module which adds the > > required flags. Of course it should be possible to specify a > > particular revision... And if BAR has itself dependencies, those too > > would be checked out. > > > > Note that Git has a nice option for cloning checked out repositories > > using hard links; that could be used to maintain a cache of checkouts, > > for instance in the user's ~/.ocamlbuild/checkouts/ directory. > > > > So basically I propose that we improve ocamlbuild to allow for > > multiple plugin files (using dynamic loading) and use that to define a > > BSD ports-like system targeted at developers. -- Nicolas Pouillard aka Ertai --=-1201615451-786309-27517-3357-3-= Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="signature.asc" Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc" -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (Darwin) iD8DBQFHnzJbj+FCNw9dwLkRAoKAAJ9zJr3+vlAKGei5qSSODFw07QYJNQCdEODc F2dpMWRGTaMLdjmnds3JOlc= =FKZn -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --=-1201615451-786309-27517-3357-3-=--