Re: [Caml-list] OCaml packaging problems

[Sven Luther <luther@lambda.u-strasbg.fr>]

On Tue, Jun 18, 2002 at 10:04:02PM +0200, Gerd Stolpmann wrote:
> 
> On 2002.06.18 15:32 Sven Luther wrote:
> > On Tue, Jun 18, 2002 at 02:57:33PM +0200, Xavier Leroy wrote:
> > > > 1)  What will be the exact name of these directories ? It would be a good
> > > > idea, i think at least, if we choose the same name for all
> > > > installations of ocaml, and not everyone choosing it's own directory.
> > > > (or else we could have a ocaml option similar to -where which would
> > > > give a pointer to these directories ? and have the choice of the
> > > > directory highly configurable, maybe a -where_stub or something such ?)
> > > > 
> > > > Actually i have the proposition of "shlibs" from you, and "libexec" from
> > > > Gerd and the findlib people. and then i feel myself "stublibs" should be
> > > > a nice name too, especially since it is just the sub libraries we are
> > > > speaking about, and not the .cma and other such ocaml libraries.
> > > 
> > > My proposal for "shlibs" was just for the sake of example, and isn't
> > > very descriptive.  I like "stublibs" or "libexec" better, actually.
> > 
> > I would go for stublibs myself, but the findlib folk seems keen on
> > libexec. Maybe we should have a long discution here on that, or you
> > would decide and we keep that, i don't know, i would need more opinion
> > on this.
> 
> There is no traditional name for the directory containing dynamically loaded 
> libraries, i.e. libraries that are not linked with "-l" into the executable.
> "libexec" is intended for executables that are run as a result of library
> calls, and that are not in PATH. I chose "libexec" because that was most
> close to DLLs.
> 
> I don't know if this is a good name, however, and I can change it again in 
> the findlib distribution. I think the point is whether everybody familiar
> with filesystem conventions finds the DLL directory immediately.

Well, let's all together choose a name and make it the 'traditional' name for
everyone.

There are two points to consider here :

 1) right now, the only thing we will put in this directory are stub
    libraries that are supposed to be dynamically loaded (the
    dllxxx.so).
 
    => so stublibs or dlls or something such is a good name, I think in
    this approach, stublib is a good name, since it distinguish between
    the stub libraries and the other libraries (well either the C libs
    (in /usr/lib) or the ocaml .cma (in /usr/lib/ocaml and its sublibs.

 2) In the future, more stuff may benefit from this same dynamic loading
    mechanism, which will not necessarily be only the stub libraries. If
    this happen to be the case, we will not want to change the name
    later on, and should choose a more generic name.

    => dlls, or dynlibs or something such would be a good choice here,
    but the real question is to know if this is something that may
    happen in the future or not.

Thus, myself i would choose between :

  o /usr/lib/ocaml/stublibs if we will only ever put stub libs in this
    directory.

  o /usr/lib/ocaml/dynlibs if we will later on also put other libs in this
    directory.

But then, we could have a multiple directories layout, with one being
for stublibs, and others for other kind of dynamic loading libs (or .cma),
So i would go with stublibs.

Are there comments on this, or can i go ahead with this ?

Friendly,

Sven Luther
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