Re: [Caml-list] CDK with Ocaml 3.06

[Sven LUTHER <luther@dpt-info.u-strasbg.fr>]

On Sun, Oct 13, 2002 at 04:20:04PM -0700, Chris Hecker wrote:
> 
> >CDK is no longer supported. So if you want to use it, you'll
> >have to make the changes for ocaml 3.06 yourself.
> 
> Is there any plan to "break up" the CDK libraries again?  In some ways it's 
> worse now than before, because now a lot of the libraries (like asmdynlink) 
> depend on a ton of CDK files and patches to the compiler because it was 
> "convenient" to do so in the CDK.  But, now that the CDK is dead, it's even 
> harder to separate out the libraries you want.
> 
> So, while it was a noble effort and I really respect and appreciate the 
> effort and the attempt, it's kind of a lose now because all of those 
> previously separate useful libraries are trapped in the decaying body!  :)

I think many of said libraries are also available outside of the CDK, so
it is easy to use these versions, maybe looking if there were patches
and trying to integrate them in the upstream package.

That would leave only a few libraries (i hope, i have not looked though)
to take out of the CDK again. Best would be to do that one by one, and
it should not cause too much problem, maybe reverting to pre-cdk
versions and applying the cdk patches increasingly would help.

I have another crazy thought. Now that the cdk is dead, many people
would still like this functionality. I have not looked at it clearly,
but we, the debian maintainers of ocaml package, already have something
that works and is thigly integrated, checks dependencies and so on.
Maybe, i did not think much about it but still there is a chance that it
would work, so maybe it would be possible to somehow port at least a
part of dpkg/apt or have a minimal feature equivalent thingy which could
be used to provide a cdk like functionality to all ocaml users. The
added benefit would be that there was more testing of ocaml package
and more visibility of our needs by upstream developpers (good for us),
and direct availability of the packages we already maintain for the
people not using debian.

The real difference is that debian is a binary distribution, while the
CDK was more of a source distribution. We already support all the linux
arches (well, ocaml and co builds on 11 of them or so) as well as hurd,
and there is a BSD port on the way, so this would mean only adapting to
the remaining arches (mostly solaris and windows, am i right ?)

Sure, it would be lot of work, and i personally have not the time for it
right now, but it could be a good idea. What do you all think of it.

Friendly,

Sven Luther
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