From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Sympa-To: caml-list@inria.fr Received: from mail4-relais-sop.national.inria.fr (mail4-relais-sop.national.inria.fr [192.134.164.105]) by walapai.inria.fr (8.13.6/8.13.6) with ESMTP id p4J9U58Q003277 for ; Thu, 19 May 2011 11:30:05 +0200 X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: AoICAPHi1E3RVdY2kGdsb2JhbACmBAgUAQEBAQkJDQcUBCGIcB6ie45PhH6JGQEBAwaFOFsEjWEBgi+FQIVFO4EnghA X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.65,236,1304287200"; d="scan'208";a="99335570" Received: from mail-bw0-f54.google.com ([209.85.214.54]) by mail4-smtp-sop.national.inria.fr with ESMTP/TLS/RC4-SHA; 19 May 2011 11:29:54 +0200 Received: by bwz12 with SMTP id 12so4315442bwz.27 for ; Thu, 19 May 2011 02:29:53 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:sender:date:from:to:subject:message-id :references:mime-version:content-type:content-disposition :content-transfer-encoding:in-reply-to:user-agent; bh=oW7XkiTFfGZ4uVjcIYF09OjmNnW+sFrv1Huw7a7d3ro=; b=FrQ94b7h3g4xRbvl7vkJZszll9QFhCVnxHcfuZyQdU+k7l6Mdg+FriG3jNHgQkiqTj H0nUVBIgP3ZF+yVFa7QIA28rRPa5b/T1xXkEoLxpQY9efaE5oE2UmQiOjfc/ize7Bf7+ gp5f9nOhAcnBBVTHlQb0WdAADFnjZ1SE5VBaM= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=sender:date:from:to:subject:message-id:references:mime-version :content-type:content-disposition:content-transfer-encoding :in-reply-to:user-agent; b=TUNWa9TkquV9xq7Y/oSWPd/BjaQKc//lUAQG1Wbaa9gCiqPWyTpeffs3FNmZbYW0hL o7fFNG+znKa5Vonu4IUNgET1ZP71r6vS6e2iFnPCRW4sza0qNzu/uCuI0OsIjgL2ZuHf afD5LHQza7fGgwmCVwdBC7LRV9go9H1liSj/o= Received: by 10.204.136.213 with SMTP id s21mr2930013bkt.0.1305797393545; Thu, 19 May 2011 02:29:53 -0700 (PDT) Received: from centi.ks368928.kimsufi.com (ks368928.kimsufi.com [94.23.39.26]) by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id q25sm1493621bkk.10.2011.05.19.02.29.51 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=OTHER); Thu, 19 May 2011 02:29:52 -0700 (PDT) Sender: Sylvain Le Gall Date: Thu, 19 May 2011 11:29:49 +0200 From: Sylvain Le Gall To: caml-list@inria.fr Message-ID: <20110519092949.GK30282@centi.ks368928.kimsufi.com> References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.20 (2009-06-14) X-Validation-by: sylvain@le-gall.net Subject: [Caml-list] Re: oasis & macosx Hello all, Sorry for the very late reply on this thread. In gmane.comp.lang.caml.inria, you wrote: >> - the documentation can be confusing, because I have written it and I >>  probably know the system too much, ideally someone with no prior >>  knowledge should review it to make it understandable by an oasis >>  beginner (help are welcome on this point) > > I don't think that's a good idea. You built that system, you are the > one who knows it best and if you don't know how to explain it to > others we have a problem. > Unfortunately teaching (as in "being able to make other people understand") and coding are two different things. I won't say that I am a good teacher. I tend to go too fast in details, which is not a good thing. The documentation already written reflect my style. As you can see, I am far from being a perfect teacher ;-) I will be glad to accept help from people that know how to teach, hopefully this will even contribute to improve my own style. > Unless I'm mistaken, at the moment there's no documentation about > oasis-db. There's this page : > > http://oasis.forge.ocamlcore.org/oasis-db.html Well, there is a preliminary work document here: https://forge.ocamlcore.org/docman/view.php/54/123/Technical+specification.pdf It gives detail on the infrastructure. But it is evolving as I code oasis-db. Once the system will reach a stable status, I will publish a more in-depth description of it. > > From the user perspective the experience I personally would like is : > > 1) Find a way to install the ocaml compilers > 2) Download the oasis sources, compile them (don't ask me to install > other things). > 3) You can now oasis install/uninstall the packages that are uploaded > in oasis-db The point 2) will be solved by providing an oasis-bundle-XXX.tar.gz that will contain oasis and its dependencies to be compiled in an easy way. But to create the bundle, I use oasis-db... (see the bundle section in the technical specification). I am working on this "bundle" subcommand since yesterday. > > From the publisher perspective the experience looks right to me, > provide an _oasis file in your tarball, upload it on oasis-db. That's > it, your package is now installable with oasis. > At least, there is a good point ;-) > > - there should be a binary installer for easy install on MacOS X, but >>  until recently I don't have a Mac at hand to do it. This is now fixed >>  but I don't manage to have the time to learn how to make a package on >>  MacOS X > > I don't think time should be lost on providing binary installers for > various platforms, this doesn't scale. Time should be spent on trying > to make oasis able to bootstrap itself based on the existence of an > ocaml install. This scales and makes oasis easy to install on every > platform where it will be needed. > Creating binary installers is not a big deal once you know how to do them. I am still a strong believer in binary distribution (i.e. Debian, Fedora or binary installers). It tends to ease the adoption of a program, especially by beginners who won't spend 30 minutes compiling something. For small programs and libraries, it should be easy to use source code distribution. But people should be allowed to have binary counterpart for some packages, especially for executables only (i.e. oasis, unison, mldonkey). This kind of executables target people that are most of the time 100% beginners in OCaml. Cheers, Sylvain Le Gall -- My company: http://www.ocamlcore.com Linkedin: http://fr.linkedin.com/in/sylvainlegall Start an OCaml project here: http://forge.ocamlcore.org OCaml blogs: http://planet.ocamlcore.org