Re: [Caml-list] OCaml Labs

[Anil Madhavapeddy <anil@recoil.org>]

On Sat, Oct 20, 2012 at 07:31:28PM +0200, Paolo Donadeo wrote:
> While I'm very grateful for your effort and while anxiously waiting for
> your book, I notice that in your post you mention a brand new package
> manager, OPAM.
> 
> Do we really need of yet another package manager? How can't OPAM scatter
> the community further?
> 
> Now, if I write a small library and I want to make it available to OCaml
> developers, I have to care about: making the source code Debian and Red Hat
> friendly, godi friendly, oasis-db friendly and, now, OPAM. And there are
> probably other systems I don't even know.
>

This is certainly a valid criticism given the current state of affairs,
but I would encourage you to listen to Thomas' talk to OUD to get an
overview of why OPAM came about, and where it's going:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivLqeRZJTGs

OPAM has picked up lessons from all the other previous package managers,
and is, as Markus noted, a generally pleasant experience for beginners to
use.  It supports a nice workflow for developing libraries, has
first-class support for multiple repositories (either DVCS or local
archives), and simultaneous installations of multiple standard libraries.

Just this by itself probably wouldnt justify a brand new package manager,
and the longer term plan is tighter integration with OASIS, ocamlbuild and
the many other build systems available.  Ultimately, we want to make it
really easy for a beginner to jump in, write their own code, reuse other
peoples code, and publish it online.  There have been a number of (very
brave and good) pieces of this puzzle over the years (notably OASIS), but
OPAM aims to pull them all together into an integrated whole.

You'll see much more of this in the next few months as OCaml Labs spins up
and begins supporting OCamlPro more in their efforts.  The first thing
we're doing is to get the ocaml.org infrastructure in place (and moving
over the excellent ocaml-lang.org over to the new domain), and part of
that work will be to figure out the unification of OASIS-DB, OPAM and
other package managers into one site.  I'm personally aiming for a demo at
the OCaml Consortium meeting in late November, and then it'll be announced
on the list.  Much of the work on OPAM has been guided by the requirements
of the bigger industrial members of the Consortium, such as Jane Street
and Citrix (e.g. support for private repositories).

I'll send out more details about this work shortly. Meanwhile, if you're
interested in working on it full-time, please do apply for the jobs at
OCaml Labs, and get in touch with questions. It's going to be fun!

-anil