Re: [Caml-list] Build-/Installation-Tools - not enogh of them?

["Daniel Bünzli" <daniel.buenzli@erratique.ch>]

On 27 November 2018 at 16:49:29, Oliver Bandel (oliver@first.in-berlin.de) wrote:

> So, if you want to write packages for the OS's, and if you know one of the tools,
> it's not enough. You have to know them all, just to create the package.
> That's an extra effort for the one who wants to package, just because the
> developer who already knows it's tool of choice is not willing to wrap the
> stuff into a Makefile.
>  
> The minimal effort on the one single side is avoided, and that creates a lot of trouble  
> in several other places.

Frankly I'm not even sure about that. Given the myriads of distributions that exist out there all with their own idiosyncrasies, it is likely that a single wrapping Makefile won't be able to satisfy them all. Worse if one provides a Makefile but actually doesn't use it, it's likely it will be outdated after a few releases. You ask why are there so many build tools ? I ask why are there so many distributions ? 

More than once I suggested to operating system packagers that they should have a close look at opam metadata to automate their packaging and engage discussions on the opam issue tracker to indicate if there's anything that could be done to help them. I almost never heared anything, except from time to time we get this occasional recurring discussion about providing silly wrapping Makefiles in packages.

I don't get it. Do system packagers really prefer to manually package things rather than (semi-)automate their processes by relying on the exact information they need in machine readable format as can be found in opam files ? Aren't they interested in the ability to tap into the vast amount of (very boring, let's salute them !) effort that is being put by opam repository maintainers to ensure OCaml packages build on a large variety of platform ?

Daniel



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