[Caml-list] OCaml package managers

[Francois Berenger <berenger@riken.jp>]

On 06/07/2012 05:43 AM, Thomas Braibant wrote:
> <snip>
>> I think OCaml is a wonderful language, and it has the potential
>> to attract much more users if we can make it easy to find, build,
>> install, compare and assess the various libraries, packages
>> and tools that are available.
>
> I completely agree with what you just said, and that was the point of
> my question: trying to assess, in a single thread, the  various
> possibilities that exist to solve a given problem [1]. Now, it happens
> that I had been thinking about the same kind of mail about package
> managers, because there is also a huge variety of solutions. So, I
> could ask, what are the pros and cons of the following package
> managers?
>
> - https://github.com/thelema/odb
> - https://github.com/hcarty/ocamlbrew
> - https://github.com/OCamlPro/opam
> - http://godi.camlcity.org/godi/index.html
> - http://oasis.forge.ocamlcore.org/oasis-db.html

Here is my personal experience with some of them (ocamlbrew, odb, oasis 
and oasis-db):
- ocamlbrew can be used to bootstrap odb (get OCaml and findlib from
   scratch)
- from there, odb can install other OCaml libraries and programs
- odb can install oasis and then use oasis-db to get packages
- you can modify a 'packages' file so that odb can install things
   that are not available publicly or that are not yet packaged for oasis

 From my point of view, these tools definitely have the UNIX taste:
they are fast, they are easy to use and quite easy to troubleshoot in 
case something doesn't work as expected; which make them excellent in my 
opinion compared to other solutions.

> But I do not want to fork that thread yet ;).

Why not? ;)

Regards,
F.