Announcement: P4ck, installer of short Camlp4 hacks

Announcement: P4ck, installer of short Camlp4 hacks

[Martin Jambon]

Dear all,

I wrote a small utility which downloads and installs small Camlp4 hacks, 
in order to make them more accessible:

   http://martin.jambon.free.fr/p4ck.html

It's called P4ck (read 4-pack), and is limited to one-file syntax 
extensions. I maintain the database of these packages, so just let me know 
of any extension that you are aware of and I will add it to the list.

Currently it knows the following, I am pretty sure this list will grow:
   pa_tryfinally pa_lettry pa_records pa_compr pa_infix hashtbl_ext
   pa_openin pa_oo

The one line installation of all the packages looks like this:
   p4ck -init -download -compile -install


Have fun!


Martin

--
Martin Jambon, PhD
http://martin.jambon.free.fr

Store and share your bioinformatics tips at http://wikiomics.org

Re: [Caml-list] Announcement: P4ck, installer of short Camlp4 hacks

[Alain Frisch]

Martin Jambon wrote:
> Dear all,
> 
> I wrote a small utility which downloads and installs small Camlp4 hacks,
> in order to make them more accessible:
> 
>   http://martin.jambon.free.fr/p4ck.html


<< Of course there is GODI, which is a wonderful tool, but writing and
maintaining a GODI package, even with godiva is still more work than
writing the syntax extension itself, once you know Camlp4. So in
practice what the authors do is place the file for download on their
personal web site with some documentation and that's it. >>

For those who know GODI as well as Camlp4, it shouldn't take more time
to write and maintain the GODI package than to write the extension
itself. Anyway...  did you consider writing either:

- a custom GODI package builder (from extensions);
- or a godi-p4ck package, which contains all the extensions in your
database.

GODI doesn't only gives automatic installation and updates, but also
package dependencies.

-- Alain

Re: [Caml-list] Announcement: P4ck, installer of short Camlp4 hacks

[Martin Jambon]

On Tue, 6 Dec 2005, Alain Frisch wrote:

> Martin Jambon wrote:
>> Dear all,
>>
>> I wrote a small utility which downloads and installs small Camlp4 hacks,
>> in order to make them more accessible:
>>
>>   http://martin.jambon.free.fr/p4ck.html
>
>
> << Of course there is GODI, which is a wonderful tool, but writing and
> maintaining a GODI package, even with godiva is still more work than
> writing the syntax extension itself, once you know Camlp4. So in
> practice what the authors do is place the file for download on their
> personal web site with some documentation and that's it. >>
>
> For those who know GODI as well as Camlp4, it shouldn't take more time
> to write and maintain the GODI package than to write the extension
> itself. Anyway...  did you consider writing either:
>
> - a custom GODI package builder (from extensions);
> - or a godi-p4ck package, which contains all the extensions in your
> database.
>
> GODI doesn't only gives automatic installation and updates, but also
> package dependencies.

Dear Alain,

Both of your suggestions are valid of course, and that may be the future 
direction that I will take (see message 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners/message/5127).
The fact is that none of the one-file syntax extensions that I am aware of 
are in GODI at the moment, including one of yours :-) (pa_openin)

I definitely don't have time to manage these syntax extensions as GODI 
packages manually, let's be realistic. So an option would be to create 
GODI packages automatically, but:
- mega-packages don't work well (see CDK), so I don't think a 
godi-p4ck-all could exist unless it is a virtual package which points to 
godi-p4ck-*
- there is no version number in the syntax extensions, and the authors 
don't bother to create one. I don't want to deal with this.
- the files can fail to download|compile|install, I don't care because 
users can fix the database without me, so I take a vacation and 
still sleep well.

Thanks for your suggestions,

Martin

--
Martin Jambon, PhD
http://martin.jambon.free.fr

Store and share your bioinformatics tips at http://wikiomics.org