Re: [Caml-list] Announcement: P4ck, installer of short Camlp4 hacks

[Martin Jambon <martin_jambon@emailuser.net>]

On Tue, 6 Dec 2005, Alain Frisch wrote:

> Martin Jambon wrote:
>> Dear all,
>>
>> I wrote a small utility which downloads and installs small Camlp4 hacks,
>> in order to make them more accessible:
>>
>>   http://martin.jambon.free.fr/p4ck.html
>
>
> << Of course there is GODI, which is a wonderful tool, but writing and
> maintaining a GODI package, even with godiva is still more work than
> writing the syntax extension itself, once you know Camlp4. So in
> practice what the authors do is place the file for download on their
> personal web site with some documentation and that's it. >>
>
> For those who know GODI as well as Camlp4, it shouldn't take more time
> to write and maintain the GODI package than to write the extension
> itself. Anyway...  did you consider writing either:
>
> - a custom GODI package builder (from extensions);
> - or a godi-p4ck package, which contains all the extensions in your
> database.
>
> GODI doesn't only gives automatic installation and updates, but also
> package dependencies.

Dear Alain,

Both of your suggestions are valid of course, and that may be the future 
direction that I will take (see message 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners/message/5127).
The fact is that none of the one-file syntax extensions that I am aware of 
are in GODI at the moment, including one of yours :-) (pa_openin)

I definitely don't have time to manage these syntax extensions as GODI 
packages manually, let's be realistic. So an option would be to create 
GODI packages automatically, but:
- mega-packages don't work well (see CDK), so I don't think a 
godi-p4ck-all could exist unless it is a virtual package which points to 
godi-p4ck-*
- there is no version number in the syntax extensions, and the authors 
don't bother to create one. I don't want to deal with this.
- the files can fail to download|compile|install, I don't care because 
users can fix the database without me, so I take a vacation and 
still sleep well.

Thanks for your suggestions,

Martin

--
Martin Jambon, PhD
http://martin.jambon.free.fr

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