Re: [Caml-list] How to start with the curren toolset?

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

On 1 December 2018 at 16:12:21, Hendrik Boom (hendrik@topoi.pooq.com) wrote:

> So, to get dune I need to install ocaml.
> To get Ocaml it's recommended to start with opam (even though I don't
> need it for dune)
> To get opam ... ??

I think this discussion could benefit if people could stop mixing users who wish to 1) install OCaml to program in OCaml 2) install OCaml because an application they use is using OCaml (those may actually not even know they are installing OCaml)

If you are in 1) your best solution is to install `opam` using one of the ways documented on the opam install page and then use the opam-repository to install an ocaml compiler and the OCaml packages you'd like to use. 

If you are in 2) then *you should not* install opam nor ocaml via opam and propably don't even know that you are going to install OCaml since that will occur as a side effect of installing the application via your operating system packager. 

If you are the people who are responsible to provide the intrastructure for 2) then the best way to provide an OCaml package is *not* to install `opam`. It is to simply follow the install instruction provided in the OCaml distribution tarball. I would then suggest you make a package to install opam (*which doesn't need dune* as a short glance over the README will tell you). Having an `opam` package then allow you then to use its libraries to develop the tools you might need for your distribution to read `opam` files and generate packages from the opam-repository metadata.

I don't think that this is super complicated. A little bit of reading in the various readme of ocaml and opam should be able to convince that this is entirely possible to do without any bootstrap problems. We had boostrap problems at at a certain point with cmdliner but I believe that this is fixed, and if it's not please tell. 

Best, 

Daniel



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