[Caml-list] Re: [Godi-list] GODI is shutting down

[Thomas Gazagnaire <thomas@ocamlpro.com>]

> There is also another point that was driving me mad in the past weeks,
> namely missing respect from the OPAM guys. Given the fact that OPAM is
> only a thin layer around ocamlfind (and guess who wrote it), and given the
> fact that GODI was pioneering in many fields, I was expecting nicer
> wordings, and less dumb campaigning ("we have 400 packages, and you only
> 170"). OPAM is only harvesting what I seeded many years ago.

I am sorry you feel that way, but I have to correct some errors. First, you seem to not make the difference between exposing a fact: "OPAM packaging workflow is easier than GODI's, hence the higher number of packages" and being disrespectful: (insert here any of the sentence related to OPAM in your recent emails).

Second, OPAM is *not* a thin layer around ocamlfind: it is a (not-so-thin) layer around the dose3 library (used by the Debian tools to manage complex dependencies), around heterogeneous metadata backends (HTTP, rsync, Git, hg, darcs) and compiler environment variables (to support multiple switch). OPAM is build-system agnostic (and could be used to build C or C++ projects for instance) and its initial goal was to integrate nicely with the existing ecosystem, namely ocamlbuild, ocamlfind and oasis (and omake and ocp-build). So yes, people are using OPAM and ocamlfind together, and this is a very good thing -- and they can use any other system if they like it.

We have been focusing on the final user experience, based on our the constant feedback from the community and industrial users, and lot of people seem to appreciate the effort. I am very sorry you don't.
 
Best,
Thomas