[Caml-list] [ANN] ocamlbrew

[Caml-list] [ANN] ocamlbrew

[Hezekiah M. Carty]

I would like to announce ocamlbrew, a (very simple, very alpha) tool
for automating and managing builds of OCaml, findlib, and other
OCaml-related items under $HOME on Linux.  ocamlbrew takes it name and
a bit of wrapper code from perlbrew[1].  ocamlbrew provides a thin
bash wrapper around the standard OCaml + findlib build procedure,
taking advantage of odb[2] for further library and tool installations.

ocamlbrew currently lives on github:
https://github.com/hcarty/ocamlbrew

With one command[3] ocamlbrew can build OCaml, findlib, oasis, utop,
Batteries, and ocamlscript from source, plus get an easily source-able
file to set up your environment.  Everything will be built and
installed under $HOME/ocamlbrew by default.

ocamlbrew can also be used to build OCaml from any branch on the
official Subversion server.  At this time I recommend using the "-f"
ocamlbrew flag with builds coming from Subversion due to some
incompatibilities between OCaml development versions and oasis.  The
-f flag tells ocamlbrew to only install OCaml, findlib, and odb.ml,
skipping other tools and libraries.  This will hopefully provide a
simple way to test and provide feedback to the core OCaml development
team when new releases or experimental branches are ready for testing.

For more information, including ocamlbrew's requirements, see the
README.md file at the link above.

Enjoy!  Many thanks to Edgar/thelema and Adrien/adrien for taking the
time to test ocamlbrew and provide feedback as I was playing around
with the process.

Hez

[1] - http://search.cpan.org/~gugod/App-perlbrew/bin/perlbrew
[2] - https://github.com/thelema/odb
[3] - Well, one command and the availability of all non-OCaml build
prerequisites...

Re: [Caml-list] [ANN] ocamlbrew

[Philippe Veber]

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Hi Hezekiah

I gave it a shot after a new install of debian wheezy, and it went really
smoothly. The install was not exactly fresh, as I had installed ocaml
packages first (old reflex), but anyway I found two deps that blocked the
installation : one on libev-dev (for lwt/utop I suppose) and libpcre3-dev
(for oasis?). As it's only two, maybe it'd be worth to add them on the
README.md.

ocamlbrew, combined with odb for installing libraries is obviously a nice
combo (at least for unix users) and seems less complex than GODI. However I
believe both tools adopt rather different strategies regarding maintenance.
GODI is good at updating packages to new versions, but up till now I am not
sure ocamlbrew/odb can do the same. It seems that with the latter, you'd
preferably start a new install from scratch rather than trying to find
what's to be updated and effectively update it. Did I miss something?

Anyway, thanks for this work, which was useful to me.
Philippe.

2012/1/8 Hezekiah M. Carty <hez@0ok.org>

> I would like to announce ocamlbrew, a (very simple, very alpha) tool
> for automating and managing builds of OCaml, findlib, and other
> OCaml-related items under $HOME on Linux.  ocamlbrew takes it name and
> a bit of wrapper code from perlbrew[1].  ocamlbrew provides a thin
> bash wrapper around the standard OCaml + findlib build procedure,
> taking advantage of odb[2] for further library and tool installations.
>
> ocamlbrew currently lives on github:
> https://github.com/hcarty/ocamlbrew
>
> With one command[3] ocamlbrew can build OCaml, findlib, oasis, utop,
> Batteries, and ocamlscript from source, plus get an easily source-able
> file to set up your environment.  Everything will be built and
> installed under $HOME/ocamlbrew by default.
>
> ocamlbrew can also be used to build OCaml from any branch on the
> official Subversion server.  At this time I recommend using the "-f"
> ocamlbrew flag with builds coming from Subversion due to some
> incompatibilities between OCaml development versions and oasis.  The
> -f flag tells ocamlbrew to only install OCaml, findlib, and odb.ml,
> skipping other tools and libraries.  This will hopefully provide a
> simple way to test and provide feedback to the core OCaml development
> team when new releases or experimental branches are ready for testing.
>
> For more information, including ocamlbrew's requirements, see the
> README.md file at the link above.
>
> Enjoy!  Many thanks to Edgar/thelema and Adrien/adrien for taking the
> time to test ocamlbrew and provide feedback as I was playing around
> with the process.
>
> Hez
>
> [1] - http://search.cpan.org/~gugod/App-perlbrew/bin/perlbrew
> [2] - https://github.com/thelema/odb
> [3] - Well, one command and the availability of all non-OCaml build
> prerequisites...
>
> --
> Caml-list mailing list.  Subscription management and archives:
> https://sympa-roc.inria.fr/wws/info/caml-list
> Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners
> Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs
>
>

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Re: [Caml-list] [ANN] ocamlbrew

[Hezekiah M. Carty]

On Fri, Jan 13, 2012 at 3:55 AM, Philippe Veber
<philippe.veber@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Hezekiah
>
> I gave it a shot after a new install of debian wheezy, and it went really
> smoothly. The install was not exactly fresh, as I had installed ocaml
> packages first (old reflex), but anyway I found two deps that blocked the
> installation : one on libev-dev (for lwt/utop I suppose) and libpcre3-dev
> (for oasis?). As it's only two, maybe it'd be worth to add them on the
> README.md.
>

I'm glad ocamlbrew worked well for you.  libev is for Lwt.  PCRE is
for the OCaml PCRE bindings, which are required by oasis.

Thank you for the README suggestion - done and pushed.

> ocamlbrew, combined with odb for installing libraries is obviously a nice
> combo (at least for unix users) and seems less complex than GODI. However I
> believe both tools adopt rather different strategies regarding maintenance.
> GODI is good at updating packages to new versions, but up till now I am not
> sure ocamlbrew/odb can do the same. It seems that with the latter, you'd
> preferably start a new install from scratch rather than trying to find
> what's to be updated and effectively update it. Did I miss something?
>

This is mostly correct.  ocamlbrew in its current state does not have
any support for in-place OCaml upgrades, and there is a chance that it
never will.  My intent with the tool is to make it easy to build
multiple, parallel versions of OCaml and switch between them.  GODI
can offer the same thing, but as you said with some extra complexity.

GODI does a good job of supporting broad updates, such as moving from
OCaml version X to OCaml version X + 1, bringing all installed
packages with it.  While ocamlbrew does not support updates in that
broad a fashion, odb does have some support for upgrading packages to
newer versions.

> Anyway, thanks for this work, which was useful to me.
> Philippe.
>

I'm glad you found ocamlbrew useful.

Hez