Re: [Caml-list] [ANN] beta-release of OPAM

[Thomas Gazagnaire <thomas@ocamlpro.com>]

> Have we started an FAQ for OPAM ?

I've created a FAQ with these two questions on OPAM wiki: https://github.com/OCamlPro/opam/wiki/FAQ

Feel free to edit and contribute!

(once we get sufficiently nice contents, this can automatically go somewhere on opam.ocamlpro.com as the other wiki pages).

--
Thomas

> 
> Sounds like the two questions and answers would deserve to be included in such an FAQ (with a copy on StackOverflow).
> 
> --Fabrice
> 
> 
> On 01/18/2013 11:42 AM, Anil Madhavapeddy wrote:
>> On 18 Jan 2013, at 10:31, Alain Frisch <alain@frisch.fr> wrote:
>> 
>>> On 01/17/2013 06:22 PM, Anil Madhavapeddy wrote:
>>>> I added `opam switch 4.01.0dev+trunk` recently, which will grab the latest trunk snapshot.
>>>> To reinstall it and refresh to a newer snapshot, just do `opam switch reinstall 4.01.0dev+trunk`, which will also attempt to recompile any packages you had in there before.
>>> 
>>> Thanks, this is exactly what I wanted!
>>> 
>>> Shouldn't the package be called simply "trunk", without a reference to a version number?
>> 
>> Yeah, but OPAM also has compiler version constraints, so that you can mark a package as requiring {>=4.00} for example.  If the package is just marked trunk, then we need to manually record the version number somewhere.
>> 
>> One option is to have a very high version, so that any packages with a lower bound will continue to work.  The other option (which I chose) is to pick the current working version, since compiler releases only happen a couple of times a year.  We can improve on this...
>> 
>>> I've started to play with opam a little bit, and it's a surprisingly pleasant experience.  Thanks to everyone who contributed to this project!
>>> 
>>> Now I want to create my first package.  I've followed the instructions from http://opam.ocamlpro.com/doc/Packaging.html but I don't know where to find opam-mk-repo (I've installed opam from the amd64 linux binary).
>> 
>> (that binary is hopefully just a stopgap until the OPAM binary packages become more widely available)
>> 
>> opam-mk-repo is installed as part of OPAM, so you'll need to install from source.  However, you don't actually need to create a repository unless you want to host a mirror of the tarballs.  Simply try this:
>> 
>> $ mkdir -p my-repo/packages
>> $ opam remote add localdev my-repo
>> <create your package inside my-repo/packages/>
>> $ opam update
>> <the new packages will be available>
>> $ opam install <new-package>
>> 
>> The same applies for compilers.
>> 
>> If you specify a git:// or darcs:// URL in the package `url` file, a subsequent `opam update` will refresh the working copy from the remote source.
>> 
>> If you want to work with a local copy of that package, just do `opam pin <package> <dir>`.
>> 
>> If you want the bleeding edge version of a stable package, you can even do `opam pin <package> git://foo/bar`.
>> 
>> Quite the swiss-army knife, but each of those scenarios has come in useful at one point or another, particularly when hacking on Mirage which requires rebuilding lots of forward dependencies if (e.g.) a network driver library is being modified.
>> 
>> -anil
>> 
> 
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