Re: [Caml-list] opam and godi

[Adrien Nader <adrien@notk.org>]

On Sun, Jul 21, 2013, Yaron Minsky wrote:
> While I appreciate the work that Gerd has done on GODI, I do think
> that OPAM is a significant improvement over GODI.
> 
> From an end-user-experience perspective, I've found OPAM to be
> considerably smoother than GODI.  In addition to having what I
> consider to be a better user interface, upgrading of packages in OPAM
> has been very smooth overall.  I found upgrades in GODI to be pretty
> tricky, with many upgrades ending in failure for one reason or
> another.  I suspect this has something to do with the system for
> handling of dependencies in OPAM, which has taken quite a bit of work
> to get right from what I understand.

I haven't had such issues that were caused by godi itself.

All of the issues I've had were caused by broken sources, packaging or
old ones. I believe the main difference between opam and godi lies in
git as Anil mentionned. By relying on git and taking advantage of its
flexibility, it makes modifying package much easier.

Let's take the example of ocamldsort. It's in godi at version 0.14.1 and
I'd like to see it at version >= 0.15. It seems to me it's only a matter
of bumping the version, everything works the same.
The work involved with GODI for such a small change seems heavier then
with opam (slightly more steps, the need to contact the current package
manager, svn).

It's a slower process but at the same time, it seems to me that almost
all of the updates that get to godi users work well. With opam, I've
seen broken packages more often but at the same time they get fixed more
quickly.

In the end, maybe you have:
- godi, slower package updates but usually more stable; bugs in packages
  are less common but when they exist, they can also take time to fix
- opam, many more updates, maybe too many, packages get less testing
  before they reach others (if you want new software, you can't have a
  week of testing between each release)

NB: don't get me wrong, I don't blame any package maintainer or package
on slow updates or bugs: many issues arise when software is used on 10
different setups (different CPUs, different OS, ....)

> In addition, the ability to easily handle multiple compilers in OPAM
> is also a big win, from my perspective.  I think it makes it much
> easier to try out and give feedback on upcoming compiler versions,
> which is good for the community as a whole.  (Plus, trying out
> bleeding-edge compiler patches is fun...)

Every time I hear this, I'm very surprised: I simply change my PATH
environment variable for the current shell I'm in and get the same
effect
For instance, my shell history has this:
  export PATH=$(echo $PATH | sed
  's;opt/ocaml;home/adrien/projects/ocaml-ty;g')

It's very simple and works even though I haven't installed ocaml-ty
through godi.


PS: Gerd, I believe the "Packager FAQ" needs some pruning. ;-) 

-- 
Adrien Nader