[Caml-list] ANN: Opam Dependency Solving in the Cloud

[Roberto Di Cosmo <roberto@dicosmo.org>]

Dear all,
   we are quite happy to announce that Opam dependency solving in
now available in the Cloud, bringing the benefits of efficient
external dependency solvers to everybody.

With the steady growth in the number of Opam packages available,
the need for a fast, specialised and full fledged dependency solver
has started to surface : the internal heuristics may blow up [1]
and the default install/upgrade strategy may be unsatisfactory [2].

Since Opam builds on technology developed in Mancoosi [3] for solving
dependencies of GNU/Linux distributions, both of these issues can be easily
addressed by using one of the available external solvers: they will allow you to get
blazingly fast solving speed *and* offer an extensive preference language
designed to let you choose the install/upgrade strategy best suited for you [4]

How can you get an external solver? For Debian/Ubuntu users, it's just a matter
of typing "apt-get install aspcud", and that's it (really!). On other platforms,
things get hairy, though, to the point of discouraging many potential users.

Now to the good news: with the help of OcamlPro [5] and the Mancoosi team, we have
setup at Irill [6] a dependency solver farm that allows anybody on any platform
to access the latest external solvers in a breeze. 

This service has been already tested internally, and seems pretty fast and
stable, so we are now opening it up in beta test to the full Opam user community
in order to gather feedback, and nail down any remaining issue.

To use it, just follow the quite simple instructions provided here:

    http://cudf-solvers.irill.org/index.html

Happy dependency solving to all

--
Roberto

[1] see for example https://github.com/ocaml/opam/issues/1056
    or https://github.com/ocaml/opam/issues/685
[2] see for example https://github.com/ocaml/opam/issues/1161
    or https://github.com/ocaml/opam/issues/1334
[3] http://www.mancoosi.org
[4] http://opam.ocaml.org/doc/Specifying_Solver_Preferences.html
[5] http://www.ocamlpro.com
[6] http://www.irill.org