While I don't like the form in which oliver's remark is expressed, I do
agree that the interface with non-OCaml libraries could be improved. First,
it is strange that not having a C library would fail during the compilation
step (with a non-obvious error message hidden in a sea of text) rather than
the configure step, which is precisely meant to detect this kind of missing
requirements. Second, GODI has a rather nice way to handle external
libraries (they are represented as specific virtualish packages that are
explicitly marked as represented an external dependency, and make it clear
what should be installed for a specific package) and handles configuration
nicely. I would expect the same of OPAM.

On Mon, Feb 25, 2013 at 9:07 AM, Gabriel Kerneis <kerneis@pps.jussieu.fr>wrote:

> Oliver,
>
> On Mon, Feb 25, 2013 at 03:09:09AM +0100, oliver wrote:
> > I have
> >   libcurl-ocaml
> > and
> >   libcurl-ocaml-dev
> > installed.
>
> I guess you need to install libcurl-dev as well.
>
> > But even if not, OPAM should install the needed stuff.
> > Thats what the command "opam install ocurl" has to do.
>
> I disagree: opam should not install package outside of its scope (i.e.
> OCaml
> packages).  You are trying to install an OCaml binding to the libcurl C
> library,
> it seems fair to expect that you have the latter installed already.
>
> > If it fails, the infrastructure is not working
> > properly.
>
> On the other hand, a more friendly error-message would be welcome (but
> this is a
> libcurl issue, not an opam one).
>
> Best,
> --
> Gabriel
>
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