Re: [Caml-list] Alternative proposal: COAN

[Brian Hurt <brian.hurt@qlogic.com>]

Thinking about it some more, I think I'm comming down opposed to a 
CPAN-style library.

At my previous job we had a large app written in Perl (~5 man-years of
development effort) which was dependent upon several CPAN libraries.  
Installing this application was *ahem* interesting.  Part of the trick was
just remembering which libraries were needed.  Installing a single CPAN
module is easy.  Installing 30 (and then backtracking to remember which
ones you missed) is a chore.  Installing a single monolithic block (or a
small number of semilithic blocks) is easier.

Versioning was also a problem.  Hopefully this was more of a language 
issue than a module issue, but it's a relevent fear.  I remember they were 
having to downgrade the perls that came with newer redhats because several 
of the libraries hadn't yet been upgraded to the newer version (or, in one 
memorable case, had been ugraded so that it worked with version X and 
version X+2, but not version X+1, which was, natch, the version RH shipped 
with).  A monolithic library, under a more central management, would make 
conformance easier to enforce.

Brian

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