Re: [Caml-list] OCaml on Amazon EC2 Instance

[Jeffrey Scofield <jeffsco@psellos.com>]

Hi Rich,

> I'm not clear what "Amazon Linux" is, but RHEL 5 and up and all
> derivatives should have an 'ocaml' package in the base distribution,
> and a small collection of libraries.  In RHEL 6 (and forthcoming
> RHEL 7) they are all in the "Optional" channel.

When I create a new EC2 instance, I get a menu of machine image
options.  I've been taking the top one because it's marked as fitting
inside the "Free Tier":

    Amazon Linux AMI 2012.03

    The Amazon Linux AMI 2012.03 is an EBS-backed, PV-GRUB image. It
    includes Linux 3.2, AWS tools, and repository access to multiple
    versions of MySQL, PostgreSQL, Python, Ruby, and Tomcat.  Root
    Device Size: 8 GB

So, this is what I mean by "Amazon Linux".  Other than what it says
above I don't know what it is, either.

As far as I can see, there's no OCaml package in its default
repositories.

However, it also includes configuration info for EPEL 6, disabled by
default.  I enabled the EPEL repository and was really hoping OCaml
would be in there.  There are quite a few OCaml libraries in the EPEL
repository, but OCaml itself isn't there.

I don't really know anything about EPEL, but I thought maybe there
was an additional repository I could add to get OCaml support.  It
seems tantalizingly close to working.

While googling I read about the Optional channel of Red Hat.  As
far as I can determine, this is part of RHN, a subscriber service.
Is this right?

It would definitely be worth some money to get good OCaml support on
Linux, but at the moment I'm just running some cloud computing
feasibility studies and am looking to go on the cheap side.

At any rate, the trick may be to choose a machine image from
further down the list!  (I did get OCaml working by using
packages from CentOS 6.2, as I wrote in another message.)

Thanks for the help.

Jeffrey