Re: [Caml-list] [ANN] oasis v0.2.0: Architecture for building OCaml libraries and applications

[bluestorm <bluestorm.dylc@gmail.com>]

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On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 1:03 AM, Sylvain Le Gall <sylvain@le-gall.net>wrote:

> Changelog and full blog post here:
> http://www.ocamlcore.com/wp/2010/10/oasis-v02-release/


I've used oasis for small experiments, and I hope this project will gain
traction.
I found it perhaps still a bit rough on the dev. side : it's heavier than
just writing a simple META file, but the benefits are important (in
particular, you can avoid autoconf but still be more flexible than a simple
Makefile-only build system), and it's particularly sweet on the user side.

I'm not convinced with the linux-installer.bin you distribute, and prefer to
build from source. oasis built flawlessly, but I first had to find the
various dependencies; in particular, the oUnit version required is newer
than the package available in either Godi or  Debian, and your small
dependencies (odn, ocamlify...) cannot be found elsewhere. They're very easy
to build (thanks to... oasis), but the whole search-on-ocamlforge process is
perhaps unnecessary.
Could you provide an archive included the source of all those dependencies
that are not in both Debian (testing) and GODI ?
I'm currently using debian testing, and have needed the following files :
- ocaml-data-notation-0.0.3.tar.gz
- ocaml-expect-0.0.2.tar.gz
- ocamlify-0.0.1.tar.gz
- ounit-1.1.0.tar.gz

(Of course, Oasis-DB will make all that a breeze ;-)


It's a triviality to say but I'm quite happy with the change in command-line
invocation style (OASIS -setup => oasis setup). Four small comments
regarding this :

- when just typing "oasis", it would be nicer to directly give the help
page; darcs and git, for example, have this behavior that I find handy

- the small message we currently have says "[..] call 'oasis -help' for
help". Wouldn't it be more consistent to "call 'oasis help'" ? I can see
that you kept the -help/--help interface for compatibility with other
command-line tools, but the subcommand-style is more consistent with the
rest of the interface

- git and darcs automatically call a pager when producing long text output;
it would also be a nice thing to have in oasis, especially for the "oasis
manual"

- the current behavior of subcommand help ("oasis help query") output first
the general help, then the subcommand-specific help; I think just the
subcommand-specific help would be a better output


Thanks for the work !

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