Re: [Caml-list] Alternative proposal: COAN

[Doug Bagley <doug+ml.caml@bagley.org>]

Xavier Leroy <xavier.leroy@inria.fr> writes:
>> [Package management in OCaml]

>> * For me the central repository should not contain the source themselves.
>
> I agree it should be sufficient to give a URL to the sources in the
> metadata describing the package.  In some cases, library authors
> cannot provide a really stable URL, hence some kind of mirrorring of
> the sources might be necessary.  (And is a real nightmare to do: INRIA
> can easily provide lots of disk space and bandwith, but making sure
> that no-one uses the INRIA mirror to trade warez is the hard part :-)
> But, yes, let's desing the system around the idea that sources are to
> be downloaded from arbitrary URLs, like BSD ports do.

Personally, I think it is much better to have the sources uploaded to
a central repository.

A couple times I have gone to the Hump, and the link for a package no
longer exists. If that author had uploaded to a centralized server,
the package is not subject to "link rot". I think this kind of problem
becomes much more frustrating for the user when dependencies become
involved, and one of the prerequsites needed by the package you really
want to install has gone missing. A centralized archive is also a boon
to those who do not have easy access to a stable server that can host
their package.

For some time now, I have been thinking about how nice a "COAN" for
Ocaml would be ... I would like to help out.

Cheers,
Doug

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