From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Original-To: caml-list@sympa.inria.fr Delivered-To: caml-list@sympa.inria.fr Received: from mail4-relais-sop.national.inria.fr (mail4-relais-sop.national.inria.fr [192.134.164.105]) by sympa.inria.fr (Postfix) with ESMTPS id A30F07EC41 for ; Sat, 20 Oct 2012 23:10:44 +0200 (CEST) Received-SPF: None (mail4-smtp-sop.national.inria.fr: no sender authenticity information available from domain of anil@recoil.org) identity=pra; client-ip=89.16.177.154; receiver=mail4-smtp-sop.national.inria.fr; envelope-from="avsm@dark.recoil.org"; x-sender="anil@recoil.org"; x-conformance=sidf_compatible Received-SPF: None (mail4-smtp-sop.national.inria.fr: no sender authenticity information available from domain of avsm@dark.recoil.org) identity=mailfrom; client-ip=89.16.177.154; receiver=mail4-smtp-sop.national.inria.fr; envelope-from="avsm@dark.recoil.org"; x-sender="avsm@dark.recoil.org"; x-conformance=sidf_compatible Received-SPF: None (mail4-smtp-sop.national.inria.fr: no sender authenticity information available from domain of postmaster@dark.recoil.org) identity=helo; client-ip=89.16.177.154; receiver=mail4-smtp-sop.national.inria.fr; envelope-from="avsm@dark.recoil.org"; x-sender="postmaster@dark.recoil.org"; x-conformance=sidf_compatible X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: Ao4DADgSg1BZELGagWdsb2JhbABDwAQEgSkBARYmJ4IgAQEFOj8QCw4KLhRJJ4d0B6dXhVSNSYtfOYVWYAOVcAGBF5IS X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.80,622,1344204000"; d="scan'208";a="159769185" Received: from recoil.dh.bytemark.co.uk (HELO dark.recoil.org) ([89.16.177.154]) by mail4-smtp-sop.national.inria.fr with SMTP; 20 Oct 2012 23:10:43 +0200 Received: (qmail 2469 invoked by uid 10000); 20 Oct 2012 21:10:43 -0000 Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2012 22:10:42 +0100 From: Anil Madhavapeddy To: Paolo Donadeo Cc: OCaml mailing list Message-ID: <20121020211042.GE5986@dark.recoil.org> References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) Subject: Re: [Caml-list] OCaml Labs 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