From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id UAA26890; Wed, 14 Apr 2004 20:42:34 +0200 (MET DST) X-Authentication-Warning: pauillac.inria.fr: majordomo set sender to owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr using -f Received: from concorde.inria.fr (concorde.inria.fr [192.93.2.39]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id UAA25681 for ; Wed, 14 Apr 2004 20:42:33 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from outbound28-2.lax.untd.com (vlan1-1.bigip2.lax.untd.com [64.136.28.160]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.12.10/8.12.10) with SMTP id i3EIgVYM009758 for ; Wed, 14 Apr 2004 20:42:31 +0200 Received: from outbound28-2.lax.untd.com (smtp03.lax.untd.com [10.130.24.123]) by smtpout06.lax.untd.com with SMTP id AABAH5BSWAHX6AM2 for (sender ); Wed, 14 Apr 2004 11:42:28 -0700 (PST) Received: (qmail 14442 invoked from network); 14 Apr 2004 18:41:30 -0000 Received: from dsc04-sei-wa-205-187-140-253.rasserver.net (HELO vangogh) (205.187.140.253) by smtp03.lax.untd.com with SMTP; 14 Apr 2004 18:41:30 -0000 From: "Brandon J. Van Every" To: Subject: [Caml-list] benefit of package management Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2004 11:50:24 -0700 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.6604 (9.0.2911.0) In-Reply-To: <20040414171429.GA5773@davidb.org> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1409 Importance: Normal X-ContentStamp: 15:7:1386179770 X-Miltered: at concorde by Joe's j-chkmail ("http://j-chkmail.ensmp.fr")! X-Loop: caml-list@inria.fr X-Spam: no; 0.00; brandon:99 knowles:99 autoconf:01 installer:01 ocamlsdl:01 python:01 dollar:99 mentality:01 brandon:99 seattle:99 crappy:01 2004:99 ocaml:01 ocaml:01 lisp:01 Sender: owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr Precedence: bulk X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 346 David Brown wrote: > Kenneth Knowles wrote: > > > Advanced package management is not particularly critical, however. > > After countless years of windows, 2 years of Slackware, and about a > > year of Gentoo, I'd say it only saves maybe an hour or two > > per month. > > (I'm using Windows and Slackware as examples of systems with no > > significant automated package management: autoconf == wizard > > installer) > > Interesting argument. It would be hard to describe how much time good > package management saves me, since without it, there would > just be many > things I wouldn't do. If I were to try and upgrade things as > frequently > as I do now, I would probably spend 5-10 hours a week just doing the > upgrades. Agreed. For instance, I just blew off doing anything with OCamlSDL because there are too many underlying libraries that don't compile terribly well on Windows. Using Nebula will be more work up front because it has no OCaml support, but since adding that support is my strategic objective anyways, I figure I'll just roll up my sleeves and get on with it. I think package management is an infrastructure, deployment, and language growth argument. Python, for instance, has abundant packaged libraries and hence a much better growth trajectory than OCaml. You, the converted, may not save a lot of time with package management, because you know your needs and they aren't changing often. For someone exploring a language and making a decision to adopt it, the case use is very different. I wish I had a dollar for every open source project I've downloaded and evaluated in the past 6 months; it would be a lot of beer money and wouldn't remotely pay for the time spent. Incidentally, if you're wondering what the consequences of eschewing an off-the-shelf mentality are, look at the Lisp community. They're dead in the water, they're never going to convince anyone to adopt their language(s) en masse. Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA "We live in a world of very bright people building crappy software with total shit for tools and process." - Ed Mckenzie --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.643 / Virus Database: 411 - Release Date: 3/25/2004 ------------------- To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr Archives: http://caml.inria.fr Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs FAQ: http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/ Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners