Note that opam in theory supports other solvers as listed at

  https://opam.ocaml.org/doc/Specifying_Solver_Preferences.html#Yestherearedifferentversionsoftheuserpreferencelanguage

for example "packup" also gives good results and may be easier to build.

In practice, however, I think that most opam users choose aspcud (maybe simply because the documentation recommends it) and I would not be surprised if opam lost compatibility with other solvers at some point, for example by making ascpud-specific assumption on the solver preference language. But more people using other solvers can only improve the problem -- and it may work already.

On Tue, Jul 12, 2016 at 5:26 PM, Ian Zimmerman <itz@buug.org> wrote:
On 2016-07-12 15:01 -0400, Gabriel Scherer wrote:

> > OTOH installing opam itself can be difficult because of its
> > dependencies, mostly aspcud.
> >
> > I just switched to gentoo, and there it is pretty much impossible unless
> > one's content with the internal solver.

> Did you consider packaging aspcud for gentoo? Are there gentoo-specific
> issues with that route?

An aspcud package exists - that is not the problem.  The problem is its
horribly long and tangled list of dependencies.  Which, unlike most
distros, includes build-only dependencies, of course.  And which is
almost guaranteed to conflict with some other package you need for an
unrelated purpose.

--
Please *no* private copies of mailing list or newsgroup messages.
Why does the arrow on Hillary signs point to the right?

--
Caml-list mailing list.  Subscription management and archives:
https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-list
Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners
Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs