[Caml-list] how could the community help with Oasis-DB; towards a CPAN for OCaml?

[Caml-list] how could the community help with Oasis-DB; towards a CPAN for OCaml?

[Gabriel Scherer]

Edgar, It's excellent to know that you have some knowledge of Oasis-DB.

I share the common assumption that this is one of the missing bricks
of the OCaml ecosystem, and I hope the community at large can help
with it. I asked Sylvain about it a few months ago, but he wasn't sure
at that time what was the best way to help. With him now having less
time available, I was afraid things could stall on that front.

Could you (or Sylvain) make a more precise picture of how exactly the
community could help in the Oasis-DB effort?

Is the priority to upload package (then maybe the warning on the
webpage advising not to do it seriously should be changed), or are
there other things we could help with, for example development
aspects? Who/where should we ask for advice/help when we have issues?

A few months ago we tried to organize an "OCaml packaging sprint", in
which in particular Hezekiah M. Carty was of great help. Do you think
we could restart a similar effort in the short future?

It would really help, I think, if:
- there was a list somewhere of things other people can contribute
- you talked more about the progress of the effort (I discovered
'odb.ml' by absolute chance a few weeks ago, while I follow almost all
OCaml-related information channels); if people don't know about your
work, they won't contribute

On Sat, Dec 10, 2011 at 10:01 PM, Edgar Friendly <thelema314@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/10/2011 03:32 PM, Andrei Formiga wrote:
>>
>> The question is: what should be done? What must be done to enable
>> OASIS-DB?
>
>
> Sylvain has worked with me to enable auto-installation of oasis-db packages
> via odb[2].  There's not a large repo of packages[1], but most of it is
> auto-installable (run odb to get a list), as long as you have ocaml and
> findlib to start from.  The dependencies are automatically handled and
> installed from source.  I even have confirmation that it works under
> windows, although it definitely needs cygwin there.
>
> The repo could use some love with people uploading[3] new packages to it.
>  Just provide a tarball and optionally a link to the tarball on some other
> website.  Oasis dependencies are detected automatically, packages w/o an
> _oasis file need to have deps specified manually.  Odb is able to install
> findlib-enabled projects that use ([./configure &&] make && make install),
> (omake && omake install) and oasis' setup.ml for building. This last option
> is able to execute whatever sequence of configure, make and install commands
> are needed for your project, without replacing the current infrastructure.
>
> Files uploaded to the repo are available with odb --unstable, they have to
> be manually approved to become part of the default --testing.  I hope that
> in time, the --stable option can become default.  Odb also installs by
> default to ~/.odb/lib.  --sudo tells it to use sudo for global install,
> --have-perms tells it to install to the global repo without sudo.  If anyone
> wants to auto-detect permissions on the ocamlfind global, we can get rid of
> --have-perms.
>
> I'm on #ocaml most of the time, and will get back to you if I'm away. Tell
> me how things work or don't.
>
> E.
>
> [1] http://oasis.ocamlcore.org/dev/browse
> [2] http://github.com/thelema/odb
> [3] http://oasis.ocamlcore.org/dev/upload
>
>
> --
> 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
>

[Caml-list] Re: how could the community help with Oasis-DB; towards a CPAN for OCaml?

[Edgar Friendly]

On 12/10/2011 04:44 PM, Gabriel Scherer wrote:
> Could you (or Sylvain) make a more precise picture of how exactly the
> community could help in the Oasis-DB effort?
>
My opinion is that oasis-db+odb is good enough for wider use.  I don't 
know what plans Sylvain has for the oasis-db server side, but what's 
currently provided is good enough to make many people's lives easier.

> Is the priority to upload package (then maybe the warning on the
> webpage advising not to do it seriously should be changed), or are
> there other things we could help with, for example development
> aspects? Who/where should we ask for advice/help when we have issues?
>
Any current work in packaging things for oasis-db will almost certainly 
be not lost by future updates.  Worst case, if the database side of the 
server gets re-designed, all it has to do is re-import the tarballs and 
everything will be fine.  AFAIK, only Sylvain can change the warning. 
As well, he's the one that knows the server side of things.  I have 
experience dealing with some of its ... subtleties, but no ability to 
fix.  For the client end (downloading, installation) - that's entirely 
me, and I'm happy to work with people on IRC (which I find myself doing 
often with beginners) or over email.

> A few months ago we tried to organize an "OCaml packaging sprint", in
> which in particular Hezekiah M. Carty was of great help. Do you think
> we could restart a similar effort in the short future?
>
Probably more useful would be for people to try packaging the libraries 
that they use for themselves.  I've not made grand announcements so that 
its users can grow slowly, without huge expectations.

> It would really help, I think, if:
> - there was a list somewhere of things other people can contribute

I've just started this wiki page: 
https://github.com/thelema/odb/wiki/SoftwareToPackage listing the status 
of many pieces of software under oasis-db.  Extend.

> - you talked more about the progress of the effort (I discovered
> 'odb.ml' by absolute chance a few weeks ago, while I follow almost all
> OCaml-related information channels); if people don't know about your
> work, they won't contribute
>
I was trying to share it with a small group to work out the bugs, and 
then share with more and more, kind of incremental adoption.  We'll see 
if Sylvain's server can handle whatever load comes from this announcement.

E.

> On Sat, Dec 10, 2011 at 10:01 PM, Edgar Friendly<thelema314@gmail.com>  wrote:
>> On 12/10/2011 03:32 PM, Andrei Formiga wrote:
>>>
>>> The question is: what should be done? What must be done to enable
>>> OASIS-DB?
>>
>>
>> Sylvain has worked with me to enable auto-installation of oasis-db packages
>> via odb[2].  There's not a large repo of packages[1], but most of it is
>> auto-installable (run odb to get a list), as long as you have ocaml and
>> findlib to start from.  The dependencies are automatically handled and
>> installed from source.  I even have confirmation that it works under
>> windows, although it definitely needs cygwin there.
>>
>> The repo could use some love with people uploading[3] new packages to it.
>>   Just provide a tarball and optionally a link to the tarball on some other
>> website.  Oasis dependencies are detected automatically, packages w/o an
>> _oasis file need to have deps specified manually.  Odb is able to install
>> findlib-enabled projects that use ([./configure&&] make&&  make install),
>> (omake&&  omake install) and oasis' setup.ml for building. This last option
>> is able to execute whatever sequence of configure, make and install commands
>> are needed for your project, without replacing the current infrastructure.
>>
>> Files uploaded to the repo are available with odb --unstable, they have to
>> be manually approved to become part of the default --testing.  I hope that
>> in time, the --stable option can become default.  Odb also installs by
>> default to ~/.odb/lib.  --sudo tells it to use sudo for global install,
>> --have-perms tells it to install to the global repo without sudo.  If anyone
>> wants to auto-detect permissions on the ocamlfind global, we can get rid of
>> --have-perms.
>>
>> I'm on #ocaml most of the time, and will get back to you if I'm away. Tell
>> me how things work or don't.
>>
>> E.
>>
>> [1] http://oasis.ocamlcore.org/dev/browse
>> [2] http://github.com/thelema/odb
>> [3] http://oasis.ocamlcore.org/dev/upload
>>
>>
>> --
>> 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
>>

more ideas (Re: [Caml-list] how could the community help with Oasis-DB;) towards a CPAN for OCaml?

[oliver]

Hello,


I again want to mention R.

The installation procdure for users is very easy.
What I also like there, is that the documentation
includes references to books, which explain the algorithms
or other background information.
Maybe thats too much of what is needed for OCaml.

But it's what I do like there.

Also R-packages necessarily need to be documented,
have a manpage / package description.

Not sure if this is necessary with OCaml stuff,
because *.mli files are there, and ocamlc -i could
print the interfaces of the modules, if nothing else is there
to rely on.
But maybe these kinds of minimalistic documentation-generation
could be created automatically by the installing tools.

Nicely printed html-docs for interfaces are very helpful.

And also nice would be, to have such nicely printed documentation
also available at the server, even before downloading any packages.
So, browsing a package documentation online could be done
before downloading the package.

The type system and module system would make it su much superior
to languages like Perl, Python or others.

It's always a fun to read the interface docs at the OCaml manual,
or that are provided by other OCaml-projects online, compared to
what any other language offers.

But for some very big libraries a meta_documentation,
something like a mini-tuorial, an overview on how to
easily jump into the usage of big library would make sense to.

Something like a hierarchical view of how the modules can be used,
because some modules may provide types that are used by other modules.
If it's displayed hierarchically and graphgically, it could save much time
looking at all kinds of modules, which maybe will never be needed.

Of course I also think that there should be some docs that explain in some words,
what the module and it's function do.
When exploring ocamlgraph some weeks ago, I saw a interface doc,
but it was not obvious what kind of functionality each function offers,
or how to find a function that offered, what I was looking for.

Via #ocaml I could get hints to the functions I needed, and it then worked
out of the box. But I would not have found it by myself.
So, maybe even some kind of keyword tagging to a provided function
would be fine.


Also what I like in the R community, is that there is a journal,
that offers articles on R, but also on statistics.
I know, there are a lot of blogs around OCaml, some company-driven,
some private.

But the R journal for R is really something that is an eye-catcher.
Downloadable as pdf. So if I want to have it on paper, I can have
high quality doc.

Current issue of R-journal:

  http://journal.r-project.org/current.html

There also is the R-Meta-Blogger-Site R-Bloggers:

  http://www.r-bloggers.com/

Of course R has a much much bigger community than OCaml.

But I think, just bringing in some more ideas could make sense here.

If this makes sense to OCaml / OCaml community or not,
I don't know. But at least I think the R-community is
somehow inspiring.

Just my 3.3 KiB

Ciao,
   Oliver

Re: more ideas (Re: [Caml-list] how could the community help with Oasis-DB;) towards a CPAN for OCaml?

[Gerd Stolpmann]

Am Dienstag, den 13.12.2011, 21:22 +0100 schrieb oliver:
> Hello,
> 
> 
> I again want to mention R.
> 
> The installation procdure for users is very easy.
> What I also like there, is that the documentation
> includes references to books, which explain the algorithms
> or other background information.
> Maybe thats too much of what is needed for OCaml.
> 
> But it's what I do like there.
> 
> Also R-packages necessarily need to be documented,
> have a manpage / package description.
> 
> Not sure if this is necessary with OCaml stuff,
> because *.mli files are there, and ocamlc -i could
> print the interfaces of the modules, if nothing else is there
> to rely on.
> But maybe these kinds of minimalistic documentation-generation
> could be created automatically by the installing tools.
> 
> Nicely printed html-docs for interfaces are very helpful.
> 
> And also nice would be, to have such nicely printed documentation
> also available at the server, even before downloading any packages.
> So, browsing a package documentation online could be done
> before downloading the package.

docs.camlcity.org

Gerd

> 
> The type system and module system would make it su much superior
> to languages like Perl, Python or others.
> 
> It's always a fun to read the interface docs at the OCaml manual,
> or that are provided by other OCaml-projects online, compared to
> what any other language offers.
> 
> But for some very big libraries a meta_documentation,
> something like a mini-tuorial, an overview on how to
> easily jump into the usage of big library would make sense to.
> 
> Something like a hierarchical view of how the modules can be used,
> because some modules may provide types that are used by other modules.
> If it's displayed hierarchically and graphgically, it could save much time
> looking at all kinds of modules, which maybe will never be needed.
> 
> Of course I also think that there should be some docs that explain in some words,
> what the module and it's function do.
> When exploring ocamlgraph some weeks ago, I saw a interface doc,
> but it was not obvious what kind of functionality each function offers,
> or how to find a function that offered, what I was looking for.
> 
> Via #ocaml I could get hints to the functions I needed, and it then worked
> out of the box. But I would not have found it by myself.
> So, maybe even some kind of keyword tagging to a provided function
> would be fine.
> 
> 
> Also what I like in the R community, is that there is a journal,
> that offers articles on R, but also on statistics.
> I know, there are a lot of blogs around OCaml, some company-driven,
> some private.
> 
> But the R journal for R is really something that is an eye-catcher.
> Downloadable as pdf. So if I want to have it on paper, I can have
> high quality doc.
> 
> Current issue of R-journal:
> 
>   http://journal.r-project.org/current.html
> 
> There also is the R-Meta-Blogger-Site R-Bloggers:
> 
>   http://www.r-bloggers.com/
> 
> Of course R has a much much bigger community than OCaml.
> 
> But I think, just bringing in some more ideas could make sense here.
> 
> If this makes sense to OCaml / OCaml community or not,
> I don't know. But at least I think the R-community is
> somehow inspiring.
> 
> Just my 3.3 KiB
> 
> Ciao,
>    Oliver
> 

Re: more ideas (Re: [Caml-list] how could the community help with Oasis-DB;) towards a CPAN for OCaml?

[oliver]

On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 01:14:57PM +0100, Gerd Stolpmann wrote:
> Am Dienstag, den 13.12.2011, 21:22 +0100 schrieb oliver:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > 
> > I again want to mention R.
> > 
> > The installation procdure for users is very easy.
> > What I also like there, is that the documentation
> > includes references to books, which explain the algorithms
> > or other background information.
> > Maybe thats too much of what is needed for OCaml.
> > 
> > But it's what I do like there.
> > 
> > Also R-packages necessarily need to be documented,
> > have a manpage / package description.
> > 
> > Not sure if this is necessary with OCaml stuff,
> > because *.mli files are there, and ocamlc -i could
> > print the interfaces of the modules, if nothing else is there
> > to rely on.
> > But maybe these kinds of minimalistic documentation-generation
> > could be created automatically by the installing tools.
> > 
> > Nicely printed html-docs for interfaces are very helpful.
> > 
> > And also nice would be, to have such nicely printed documentation
> > also available at the server, even before downloading any packages.
> > So, browsing a package documentation online could be done
> > before downloading the package.
> 
> docs.camlcity.org
[...]

Yes, I see.
There are these nice htmlized-docs.

But I meant that this kind of docs also should also be on
a CPAN-like server for OCaml.
So every package that is available there should also be
documented in this way.

Ciao,
  Oliver

Re: more ideas (Re: [Caml-list] how could the community help with Oasis-DB;) towards a CPAN for OCaml?

[Gerd Stolpmann]

Am Mittwoch, den 14.12.2011, 15:55 +0100 schrieb oliver:
> On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 01:14:57PM +0100, Gerd Stolpmann wrote:
> > Am Dienstag, den 13.12.2011, 21:22 +0100 schrieb oliver:
> > > Hello,
> > > 
> > > 
> > > I again want to mention R.
> > > 
> > > The installation procdure for users is very easy.
> > > What I also like there, is that the documentation
> > > includes references to books, which explain the algorithms
> > > or other background information.
> > > Maybe thats too much of what is needed for OCaml.
> > > 
> > > But it's what I do like there.
> > > 
> > > Also R-packages necessarily need to be documented,
> > > have a manpage / package description.
> > > 
> > > Not sure if this is necessary with OCaml stuff,
> > > because *.mli files are there, and ocamlc -i could
> > > print the interfaces of the modules, if nothing else is there
> > > to rely on.
> > > But maybe these kinds of minimalistic documentation-generation
> > > could be created automatically by the installing tools.
> > > 
> > > Nicely printed html-docs for interfaces are very helpful.
> > > 
> > > And also nice would be, to have such nicely printed documentation
> > > also available at the server, even before downloading any packages.
> > > So, browsing a package documentation online could be done
> > > before downloading the package.
> > 
> > docs.camlcity.org
> [...]
> 
> Yes, I see.
> There are these nice htmlized-docs.
> 
> But I meant that this kind of docs also should also be on
> a CPAN-like server for OCaml.
> So every package that is available there should also be
> documented in this way.

Yes, it's a third party server. What's the problem?

My thinking here is different: We should lower the barriers for packages
as far as possible. We are not in the position of CPAN who can reject
packages not conforming to a relatively high standard.

docs.camlcity.org does the best in this situation: If there is a manual,
you can look at this. But if not, there is at least a pretty-printed
interface, and you can search these interfaces.

Gerd

> Ciao,
>   Oliver
> 

Re: more ideas (Re: [Caml-list] how could the community help with Oasis-DB;) towards a CPAN for OCaml?

[oliver]

On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 04:37:26PM +0100, Gerd Stolpmann wrote:
> Am Mittwoch, den 14.12.2011, 15:55 +0100 schrieb oliver:
> > On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 01:14:57PM +0100, Gerd Stolpmann wrote:
> > > Am Dienstag, den 13.12.2011, 21:22 +0100 schrieb oliver:
> > > > Hello,
> > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > I again want to mention R.
> > > > 
> > > > The installation procdure for users is very easy.
> > > > What I also like there, is that the documentation
> > > > includes references to books, which explain the algorithms
> > > > or other background information.
> > > > Maybe thats too much of what is needed for OCaml.
> > > > 
> > > > But it's what I do like there.
> > > > 
> > > > Also R-packages necessarily need to be documented,
> > > > have a manpage / package description.
> > > > 
> > > > Not sure if this is necessary with OCaml stuff,
> > > > because *.mli files are there, and ocamlc -i could
> > > > print the interfaces of the modules, if nothing else is there
> > > > to rely on.
> > > > But maybe these kinds of minimalistic documentation-generation
> > > > could be created automatically by the installing tools.
> > > > 
> > > > Nicely printed html-docs for interfaces are very helpful.
> > > > 
> > > > And also nice would be, to have such nicely printed documentation
> > > > also available at the server, even before downloading any packages.
> > > > So, browsing a package documentation online could be done
> > > > before downloading the package.
> > > 
> > > docs.camlcity.org
> > [...]
> > 
> > Yes, I see.
> > There are these nice htmlized-docs.
> > 
> > But I meant that this kind of docs also should also be on
> > a CPAN-like server for OCaml.
> > So every package that is available there should also be
> > documented in this way.
> 
> Yes, it's a third party server. What's the problem?
[...]

if it offers a shell and the possibility to install OCaml
(or maybe the admin could od that), then there is no problem.

ocamlc -i   and  caml2html  can be used then to create the docs
automotically.


> 
> My thinking here is different: We should lower the barriers for packages
> as far as possible. We are not in the position of CPAN who can reject
> packages not conforming to a relatively high standard.

People who are able to program in OCaml also might be able to
add some additional simple textfiles for further informations,
if necessary. Some more docs would be fine.
But maybe that not even is necessary for a minmal set of docs.

The creation of the interface docs can be done as mentioned above.
Additionally there was a module (forgot the name, but could look for it),
which also displays the hierrchy of modules (which module uses which other modules).

All this could be deon automatically, if the server at least offers a shell
and OCaml.

Unpacking an archive, applying ocamlc and caml2html could be done automatically.

And if one looks at CTAN, there are some additional simple text files (package descriptions)
which help organizing this.

I think overengineering is not a good idea, but a minimal helping text file should be
possible for people who claim to program in OCaml.

For example there was/is the Linux Software Map; it's already forgotten by most
people, but once was a very useful tool... it doies exist today, but maybe not very
frequently used.
But there it was a simple text file with some informations about the software,
that was added and had a very simple format.
It was parsed automatically and created the data dfor the search catalog.

Thats btw. a lot less effort than clikcing around in so many menues
in the modern web driven software hosting possibilities.

I think it should be possible to add such a simple textfile.

If that is too much for OCaml programmrs, I doubt that any person ever will want
to use the software that will be hosted there.

I think there are enough very knowledgable people hacking in OCaml.

So this little barrier should be able to cross.




> 
> docs.camlcity.org does the best in this situation: If there is a manual,
> you can look at this. But if not, there is at least a pretty-printed
> interface, and you can search these interfaces.

That's what I meant.
Is this doc generated automatically?

That's what I was looking for.

And the module-hierarchy of a program could also be added.

But the people who upload their stuff should be encouraged to add documentation.
Maybe some tools could help there.

I like it that C-extensions to R necessarily need a documentation file.
I would not insist on such a thing for OCaml, but if you look at what
the result is, when looking at R-package documentation, this is convincing.
It uses - like classical unix manpages - certain topics, which will be checked
if they are used.

If OCaml stands for quality, why not insisting at least on  a minimal
kind of documentation?

Ciao,
   Oliver

[Caml-list] Re: how could the community help with Oasis-DB; towards a CPAN for OCaml?

[Sylvain Le Gall]

Hello,

On 10-12-2011, Gabriel Scherer <gabriel.scherer@gmail.com> wrote:
> Edgar, It's excellent to know that you have some knowledge of Oasis-DB.
>
> I share the common assumption that this is one of the missing bricks
> of the OCaml ecosystem, and I hope the community at large can help
> with it. I asked Sylvain about it a few months ago, but he wasn't sure
> at that time what was the best way to help. With him now having less
> time available, I was afraid things could stall on that front.
>

Well things is now less stalled than before my new job. I have pushed a
couple of patches in oasis darcs repository and I am working to deliver
a oasis 0.2.1 sooner or later.

> Could you (or Sylvain) make a more precise picture of how exactly the
> community could help in the Oasis-DB effort?

See above.

>
> Is the priority to upload package (then maybe the warning on the
> webpage advising not to do it seriously should be changed), or are
> there other things we could help with, for example development
> aspects? 

You can upload packages to the server. They won't be lost. The main
point of the dev server DB is for the OCaml community to see if the
service is useful. I won't commit myself into delivering a long term
production server if nobody thinks it is useful.

Helping me to debug by uploading package to oasis-db has 4 "good" effects:
- you use oasis in you project and you can debug it/help me improve it
- you allow other projects to use your package to test oasis-db (e.g odb.ml)
- you increase the visibility of oasis-db and people gradually thinks it
  is a good solution
- it cheers me (ok seems like dumb, but that motivates)

Concerning the dev. aspect see above.

> Who/where should we ask for advice/help when we have issues?

Either you can create a bug in the BTS (or a feature request), send a
mail to oasis-devel@lists.forge.ocamlcore.org, have a
chat on #ocaml IRC on freenode (more and more people are able to answer
your question on OASIS here) or send me an email. This should be the
last option because the discussion won't be public.

> It would really help, I think, if:
> - there was a list somewhere of things other people can contribute

Well there is:
http://oasis.forge.ocamlcore.org/contribute.html

> - you talked more about the progress of the effort (I discovered
> 'odb.ml' by absolute chance a few weeks ago, while I follow almost all
> OCaml-related information channels); if people don't know about your
> work, they won't contribute

odb.ml was started by thelema and it remains his project, I let him
communicate on that. But you can see on the home page of oasis-db a link
to odb.ml that directs to an explanation of what it is (Section
"Installing packages from OASIS-DB"). 

I think in general oasis probably needs a better press coverage... Will
try to improve this aspect.

So concerning other help:

For dvlpt:
- if you want to work on the core oasis or oasis-db, here is a short
  list of possible tasks:
    - bug/feature fixing for oasis v0.2.1:
      https://forge.ocamlcore.org/tracker/index.php?group_id=54&atid=291&power_query=1&query_id=21&run
      https://forge.ocamlcore.org/tracker/index.php?group_id=54&atid=294&power_query=1&query_id=23&run
    - other bug/feature fixing for oasis (browser and pick the one you
      want)
    - find a way to express C dependencies (pkg-config, .h files ?)
    - find a way to use syntax extension (Modules: Foo (syntax: camlp4o,
      camlp4.macro), Bar ?)
- if you want to work on external projects:
  - work on a oasis2rpm tools (like oasis2debian)
  - work on a oasis2godi tools (like oasis2debian and ~ GODIVA)
  - work on a oasis-db plugin that get the version of OCaml package
    available in Fedora, Arch Linux, Gentoo (it exists for GODI, Debian)

For communication:
- if you want to improve the designe of the current oasis-db/oasis
  website, I welcome your idea
- I need reviewer for the content of oasis.forge.ocamlcore.org and
  oasis.ocamlcore.org to spot obvious grammatical bugs/bad english
- if you are good at blogging, I need your help to write a series of
  articles how to use oasis in your ocaml project. The best is to tell
  your story about how you apply successfully oasis to your project or
  how it helps you.

Cheers,
Sylvain Le Gall
-- 
Linkedin:   http://fr.linkedin.com/in/sylvainlegall
Start an OCaml project here: http://forge.ocamlcore.org
OCaml blogs:                 http://planet.ocamlcore.org

Re: [Caml-list] Re: how could the community help with Oasis-DB; towards a CPAN for OCaml?

[Andrej Bauer]

I tried to use Oasis on one of my projects. I got stuck at the very
begining. I am on MacOS, there is no binary installer, and no
instructions for MacOS users. It told me a bunch of dependencies were
unsatisfied when I tried to compile. It would be useful to write a
line or two about how to satisfy all the dependecies, for example:

"If you are compiling Oasis from source, it is easiest to satisfy all
the dependencies by installing them via GODI" (if that's even true).

Even better: provide a binary installer for MacOS.

With kind regards,

Andrej

Re: [Caml-list] Re: how could the community help with Oasis-DB; towards a CPAN for OCaml?

[Daniel Bünzli]

> I tried to use Oasis on one of my projects. I got stuck at the very
> begining. I am on MacOS, there is no binary installer, and no
> instructions for MacOS users. It told me a bunch of dependencies were
> unsatisfied when I tried to compile.

Agreed. Installing the dependencies on osx is just too painful.

But as I said before on this list, instead of providing binary
installers, I think it would be much more productive for users and
oasis devs to be able to bootstrap oasis provided with a raw ocaml
install and a reasonably posix compliant unix system (let's pretend I
didn't follow the discussion on ocaml for windows).

Best,

Daniel

Re: [Caml-list] Re: how could the community help with Oasis-DB; towards a CPAN for OCaml?

[Edgar Friendly]

On 12/17/2011 06:27 PM, Daniel Bünzli wrote:
>> I tried to use Oasis on one of my projects. I got stuck at the very
>> begining. I am on MacOS, there is no binary installer, and no
>> instructions for MacOS users. It told me a bunch of dependencies were
>> unsatisfied when I tried to compile.
>
> Agreed. Installing the dependencies on osx is just too painful.
>
> But as I said before on this list, instead of providing binary
> installers, I think it would be much more productive for users and
> oasis devs to be able to bootstrap oasis provided with a raw ocaml
> install and a reasonably posix compliant unix system (let's pretend I
> didn't follow the discussion on ocaml for windows).

I also agree that a binary package is much less satisfactory anywhere 
with a compilation environment.

I'd love to get a report on how well odb can be used on mac.  Its second 
test of usefulness was being able to install oasis, which has a *ton* of 
deps.  It passed this test a long time ago, and should install oasis 
just fine.

If you have ocaml and findlib installed, odb should work for you.  Of 
course, let me know via its bugtracker or #ocaml on IRC if you have any 
problems.

E.

Re: [Caml-list] Re: how could the community help with Oasis-DB; towards a CPAN for OCaml?

[Benedikt Meurer]

On Dec 17, 2011, at 22:50 , Andrej Bauer wrote:

> I tried to use Oasis on one of my projects. I got stuck at the very
> begining. I am on MacOS, there is no binary installer, and no
> instructions for MacOS users. It told me a bunch of dependencies were
> unsatisfied when I tried to compile. It would be useful to write a
> line or two about how to satisfy all the dependecies, for example:
> 
> "If you are compiling Oasis from source, it is easiest to satisfy all
> the dependencies by installing them via GODI" (if that's even true).
> 
> Even better: provide a binary installer for MacOS.

I created MacPorts for OASIS and its dependencies some time ago, you can install them using my Portfile repository at [1], the OASIS port is named "caml-oasis".

> With kind regards,
> Andrej

HTH,
Benedikt

[1] https://github.com/bmeurer/MacPorts

Re: [Caml-list] Re: how could the community help with Oasis-DB; towards a CPAN for OCaml?

[Ashish Agarwal]

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On Sun, Dec 18, 2011 at 4:35 AM, Benedikt Meurer <
benedikt.meurer@googlemail.com> wrote:


>  the OASIS port is named "caml-oasis".
>

Please try to transition to the consistent name OCaml, a decision made at
the 2011 OCaml Users Meeting. Using it in lower case is okay in certain
contexts such as a package name, so here I would recommend "ocaml-oasis".

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Re: [Caml-list] Re: how could the community help with Oasis-DB; towards a CPAN for OCaml?

[Benedikt Meurer]

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Am 18.12.2011 um 20:46 schrieb Ashish Agarwal <agarwal1975@gmail.com>:

On Sun, Dec 18, 2011 at 4:35 AM, Benedikt Meurer <
benedikt.meurer@googlemail.com> wrote:


>  the OASIS port is named "caml-oasis".
>

Please try to transition to the consistent name OCaml, a decision made at
the 2011 OCaml Users Meeting. Using it in lower case is okay in certain
contexts such as a package name, so here I would recommend "ocaml-oasis".


This is the prefix used within MacPorts to identify OCaml packages. I don't
know why it isn't ocaml.

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Re: [Caml-list] Re: how could the community help with Oasis-DB; towards a CPAN for OCaml?

[Anil Madhavapeddy]

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On 18 Dec 2011, at 20:01, Benedikt Meurer wrote:

> Am 18.12.2011 um 20:46 schrieb Ashish Agarwal <agarwal1975@gmail.com>:
> 
>> On Sun, Dec 18, 2011 at 4:35 AM, Benedikt Meurer <benedikt.meurer@googlemail.com> wrote:
>>  
>> the OASIS port is named "caml-oasis".
>> 
>> Please try to transition to the consistent name OCaml, a decision made at the 2011 OCaml Users Meeting. Using it in lower case is okay in certain contexts such as a package name, so here I would recommend "ocaml-oasis".
> 
> This is the prefix used within MacPorts to identify OCaml packages. I don't know why it isn't ocaml.

It's just historical. I imported a bunch of OCaml packages into Macports a few years ago and preserved the prefix since it wasn't really worth the trouble to rename so many ports.

I've actually given up on MacPorts and switched to Homebrew recently. They don't like importing libraries in Homebrew and defer that to the language-specific package manager.  I'm hoping that odb will be sufficient to act as the lightweight library installer to complement Homebrew.

The only annoying thing about installing OCaml from source these days is the 'compiler-libs' convention that most packages seem to do, but isn't really written down anywhere. Is there a Mantis bug about this one (I couldn't find one)? It's really helpful to get the Lwt toplevel working and isn't very obvious where those files come from without diving into the Debian packaging.

I've got a small pull request to add it to the Homebrew package at any rate. Comment on it to give it some life and it might even get merged... https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/pull/9002

-anil

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