From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id OAA03718; Tue, 25 Feb 2003 14:05:21 +0100 (MET) X-Authentication-Warning: pauillac.inria.fr: majordomo set sender to owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr using -f Received: (from xleroy@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id OAA03403 for caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr; Tue, 25 Feb 2003 14:05:19 +0100 (MET) Received: from concorde.inria.fr (concorde.inria.fr [192.93.2.39]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id LAA32055 for ; Tue, 25 Feb 2003 11:55:06 +0100 (MET) Received: from shiva.jussieu.fr (shiva.jussieu.fr [134.157.0.129]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.11.1) with ESMTP id h1PAt5T23970 for ; Tue, 25 Feb 2003 11:55:06 +0100 (MET) Received: from helium.pps.jussieu.fr (helium.pps.jussieu.fr [134.157.168.2]) by shiva.jussieu.fr (8.12.5/jtpda-5.4) with ESMTP id h1PAt3YY016151 ; Tue, 25 Feb 2003 11:55:04 +0100 (CET) Received: from localhost (helium.pps.jussieu.fr [134.157.168.2]) by helium.pps.jussieu.fr (8.11.6/jtpda-5.3.2) with ESMTP id h1PAt2d01117 ; Tue, 25 Feb 2003 11:55:02 +0100 (CET) Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] ident=dicosmo) by localhost with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 18ncjb-0002ak-00; Tue, 25 Feb 2003 11:54:51 +0100 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <15963.19322.759255.37091@gargle.gargle.HOWL> Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 11:54:50 +0100 To: Brian Hurt Cc: Francois Rouaix , Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Alternative proposal: COAN In-Reply-To: References: <02103BF1-4835-11D7-B97A-000A95773ED2@rouaix.org> X-Mailer: VM 7.04 under 21.4 (patch 8) "Honest Recruiter" XEmacs Lucid Reply-To: Roberto Di Cosmo From: roberto@dicosmo.org X-Antivirus: scanned by sophie at shiva.jussieu.fr Sender: owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr Precedence: bulk I think I cannot avoid to agree with what Brian puts forward: I had a similar experience installyng Sympa (a Majordomo replacement written in Perl by a French institution, which, by the way, is a remarkable piece of software), where I spent a day trying to understand why the ludicrous install procedure was throwing on me zillions of packages, including a rebuild of Perl 5.8. But it is probably necessary here to clearly separate the different issues... at first sight, I see: - centralized repository: Issue: we want some central place where to look for Ocaml code without resorting to google Solution: this can be done in a pretty simple way, and the Humps are a step in this direction, but they are not yet a centralized repository (code is still spread around the world: it would be nice if we had a central mirror of all the code, instead of only pointer). - easy installation: Issue: I want to run advi to give flashy LaTeX presentation, and I want to just get a binary for my nice OS I love so much, without having to recompile anything Solution: well, either there is a monolithic binary already ready for you, or you will need to recompile something. In this last case, if the standard library (or extended standard library) is complete enough, maybe a simple "make" will do (this is what I really really like of many old Ocaml programs, or actually, about CamlLight and Ocaml itself :-) ). Notice that this is quite similar to the approach used by NeXT in the good 'ole days when they gave you a big shared library (the standard library) and all the rest was statically linked, to prevent you from shooting yourself in the foot. But Ocaml is going mainstream, so the chances of a monolithic library good for everything seem, IMHO, low, and it is wise to consider the third issue... - dependency tracking: Issue: we would really really like to avoid reading "README"s to discover the zillion packages on which the next future generation Ocaml killer application will depend. Just type "install XYZ" and that's it. Solution: not so easy... because all this really requires: - a standard for declaring dependencies (XYZ depends on ZWT, WTX and WXW) - a standard for managing versions (XYZ v n.m depends on ZWT v >= n'.m' etc.) - a standard for fetching sources/binaries from repositories - a standard for rebuilding/recompiling packages But, wait, after all, this is pretty similar to what is done by apt in the Debian linux distribution! Probably one should have a look at apt as a starting point. I would be interested to have the feelings of the various people here that do Debian packages on the suitability of the apt tools to handle this kind of issues in the Ocaml world. Sorry for being long ... >>>>> "Brian" == Brian Hurt writes: Brian> Thinking about it some more, I think I'm comming down opposed to a Brian> CPAN-style library. [snip] Brian> Installing this application was *ahem* interesting. [snip] Brian> Versioning was also a problem. [snip] A monolithic library, Brian> under a more central management, would make conformance easier to Brian> enforce. --Roberto Di Cosmo ------------------------------------------------------------------ Professeur (on leave at/detache a INRIA Roquencourt) PPS E-mail: roberto@dicosmo.org Universite Paris VII WWW : http://www.dicosmo.org Case 7014 Tel : ++33-(1)-39 63 51 97 2, place Jussieu Fax : ++33-(1)-44 27 68 49 F-75251 Paris Cedex 05 FRANCE. 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