[Caml-list] A simple suggestion for Caml.

[Caml-list] A simple suggestion for Caml.

[Thaddeus L. Olczyk]

I've looked for this feature in both the manual and the O'Reilly book
and asked numerous people. If it exists, it seems not to be that well
known.

The feature itself should be quite simple to implement. The basic
idea is to specify a environmental variable, call it CAML_PATH
or CAML_LIBRARY_PATH, which is a colon seperated (semicolon for
Windows ) list of directories where libraries can be found.

It would add greatly to portability of Caml programs and libraries.
Yes you can add libraries on the commandline, but to make projects
portable you have to resort to tricks with scripts producing scripts.
( Autoconfig,Automake etc come to mind. ) It becomes particularly
nasty when scripts or script generating scripts are for one reason or
another broken.

Using the technique I describe, a person adding a library only has
to do two things: 1) Set the environmental variable to include needed
libraries; 2) Follow the normal build procedure.


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Re: [Caml-list] A simple suggestion for Caml.

[Alessandro Baretta]

Thaddeus L. Olczyk wrote:
> I've looked for this feature in both the manual and the O'Reilly book
> and asked numerous people. If it exists, it seems not to be that well
> known.
> 
> The feature itself should be quite simple to implement. The basic
> idea is to specify a environmental variable, call it CAML_PATH
> or CAML_LIBRARY_PATH, which is a colon seperated (semicolon for
> Windows ) list of directories where libraries can be found.

A long discussion has been held by this list on this 
subject. You should read the archives at 
http://caml.inria.fr/caml-list-eng.html to figure out what 
proposals have been made and what the actual state of the 
art is.

Did you look into findlib, by Gerd Stolpmann?

Alex

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Re: [Caml-list] A simple suggestion for Caml.

[Thaddeus L. Olczyk]

On Sun, 06 Oct 2002 16:00:40 +0200, Alessandro Baretta
<alex@baretta.com> wrote:

>
>
>Thaddeus L. Olczyk wrote:
>> I've looked for this feature in both the manual and the O'Reilly book
>> and asked numerous people. If it exists, it seems not to be that well
>> known.
>> 
>> The feature itself should be quite simple to implement. The basic
>> idea is to specify a environmental variable, call it CAML_PATH
>> or CAML_LIBRARY_PATH, which is a colon seperated (semicolon for
>> Windows ) list of directories where libraries can be found.
>
>A long discussion has been held by this list on this 
>subject. You should read the archives at 
>http://caml.inria.fr/caml-list-eng.html to figure out what 
>proposals have been made and what the actual state of the 
>art is.
What's the title of the thread? I can't seem to find it.

( Given how trivial the change is I find it hard to believe that
it would generate any sort of discussion. )
>
>Did you look into findlib, by Gerd Stolpmann?
>
Are you telling me that if I have someones xyz library 
and it can't build because it can't find libraries already installed
on my machine, that all I would have to do (to fix it) is add findlib.

Are you saying that if I have a library that relies on libraries and
I want to distribute it, all I have to do is add findlib with no other
effort.

If not then findlib is not the solution to this problem.


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