Re: [Caml-list] opam and godi

["Gerd Stolpmann" <info@gerd-stolpmann.de>]

Sad to read such FUD here. The truth is that the company Yaron is working
for never managed to create good Core packages. I don't know what the
reason is, but I guess so it is within this company, since other people
with fewer resources mastered similar tasks well. This is something I was
always puzzled about, since initially there was good cooperation with this
company.

So far I've removed Core from GODI because it misses QA standards, and
have no plans to add it again.

Gerd

Yaron Minsky wrote:
> While I appreciate the work that Gerd has done on GODI, I do think
> that OPAM is a significant improvement over GODI.
>
> From an end-user-experience perspective, I've found OPAM to be
> considerably smoother than GODI.  In addition to having what I
> consider to be a better user interface, upgrading of packages in OPAM
> has been very smooth overall.  I found upgrades in GODI to be pretty
> tricky, with many upgrades ending in failure for one reason or
> another.  I suspect this has something to do with the system for
> handling of dependencies in OPAM, which has taken quite a bit of work
> to get right from what I understand.
>
> In addition, the ability to easily handle multiple compilers in OPAM
> is also a big win, from my perspective.  I think it makes it much
> easier to try out and give feedback on upcoming compiler versions,
> which is good for the community as a whole.  (Plus, trying out
> bleeding-edge compiler patches is fun...)
>
> With the arrival of OPAM, for the first time I feel good about
> recommending that new users try out libraries with significant
> dependencies like Core, since installing such libraries is now really
> quite simple.
>
> y
>
> On Sun, Jul 21, 2013 at 10:20 AM, Anil Madhavapeddy <anil@recoil.org>
> wrote:
>> On 21 Jul 2013, at 14:54, "Gerd Stolpmann" <info@gerd-stolpmann.de>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hello,
>>>> could someone explain please the relation between godi and opam ? Is
>>>> it
>>>> concurrent ?
>>>> Godi has been there for some time, and works quite nicely. So what are
>>>> differences ?
>>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> both are independent projects. OPAM is a younger project, and I don't
>>> really know what the motivation behind it is (in addition to the
>>> generic
>>> motication to hack something). There were initially claims to make it
>>> is
>>> easier to package software up, but what I've seen is actually not much
>>> different from GODI (actually even worse now that GODI allows it to
>>> fully
>>> automate package releases).
>>
>> The answer's right there on the front page:
>>
>> "OPAM is a source-based package manager for OCaml. It supports multiple
>> simultaneous compiler installations, flexible package constraints, and a
>> Git-friendly development workflow."
>>
>>> The feature sets are not the same, and some stuff works better in OPAM
>>> and
>>> some in GODI. As I'm advocating the latter, let me point out some
>>> features
>>> where I think GODI is better:
>>
>> Feature minutiae aside, I'd say the biggest benefit of OPAM is the more
>> open development workflow. It's easier for people to maintain their
>> own branches and contribute changes to the central repository.
>>
>> Let's look at the stable repository "pulse":
>> https://github.com/OCamlPro/opam-repository/pulse/monthly
>>
>> It tells us that in the last month, there have been 30 authors that have
>> pushed 167 package updates. These have all come in as pull requests that
>> can still be browsed.  For example, see the latest Core from Jane
>> Street:
>> https://github.com/OCamlPro/opam-repository/pulls?state=closed
>>
>> Several development groups also maintain their own remotes without any
>> need to depend on the central repository. For example, see Citrix's:
>> https://github.com/xapi-project/opam-repo-dev/tree/master/packages
>>
>> As Gerd points out, GODI is an older and more mature project. I find
>> OPAM more useful for my own personal development workflow though. You
>> should try both out and see which one you prefer.
>>
>> cheers,
>> Anil
>>
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-- 
Gerd Stolpmann, Darmstadt, Germany    gerd@gerd-stolpmann.de
Creator of GODI and camlcity.org.
Contact details:        http://www.camlcity.org/contact.html
Company homepage:       http://www.gerd-stolpmann.de
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