Re: Problems to get larger user base ... (Re: [Caml-list] OCaml's variables)

[Francois Berenger <berenger@riken.jp>]

On 05/30/2013 09:57 AM, Chet Murthy wrote:
>
> On Thursday, May 30, 2013 09:45:51 AM Francois Berenger wrote:
>> By the way, is there some plan to support binary packages
>> at some point in time with OPAM?
>>
>> I don't mean OCamlPro distributing them but for an OPAM
>> user to be able to create them locally.
>>
>> That would speedup the process of installing software (given they
>> have at least been compiled once).
>
> This.
>
> OK.  A little more.  OPAM is already a tremendous improvement.  But to
> really make it possible to build -systems- in Ocaml, you have to be
> able to distribute collections of programs, config, and libraries,
> across multiple (admittedly identical) machines.  And distribute
> updates to same.  OPAM is in some ways like BSD ports -- it works
> great for maintaining single machines from source-code.

And that's why I asked. I think ports are like src-RPMs:
they can be turned easily into binary packages.

> But what's needed is a way to maintain -many- machines, and to
> distribute updates in a granular manner that be -managed- -- rolled
> forward, rolled back, with full knowledge of which versions of which
> packages are being installed.  And everything with -zero- version
> skew.  So any nondeterminism happened at buiild-time -- by
> deploy-time, all machines are getting identical files with identical
> timestamps.
>
> It's a tall order, b/c OPAM will need to figure out how to capture
> enough of the environment (in order to check it on the target machine
> where a binary is installed) to verify whether it's safe to install
> that binary.  But boy would it be nice.
>
> And as a bonus, we could wrapper opam in the debian apparatus (I
> think) and get a really nice way to turn opam packages into debian
> packages.
>
> --chet--
>