Re: Cherry-picking modules (was Re: [ANN] OCaml Reins 0.1 - Persistent Data Structure Library)

[Sylvain Le Gall <sylvain@le-gall.net>]

On 26-09-2007, Jim Miller <gordon.j.miller@gmail.com> wrote:
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>>
>> It is funny, because when you see other big languages -- which are
>> working very well -- like Perl, they all try to avoid embedding libraries!
>>
>> The only real needs is to have something that automatically
>> download/build/install dependency!
>>
>> AND WE HAVE IT: godi!
>>
>> Or if you want things more distro based: debian...
>
>
> Take it or leave it, just my $.02 from trying to introduce OCaml into an
> environment where we write network applications (including but not limited
> to web services) that have to run on very tightly controlled systems.  (I
> know I'm in the huge minority of programmers)
>

Second solution: distribution based OCaml -> debian.

For your example, debian is distributing package for PXP (XML),
PagodaCF (network), OCsigen (webservices).... You have most of this in
stable release (Etch) and a lot more in unstable (Sid).

You can burn a CD or DVD of the distribution. 

To see all the ocaml library we have:
http://pkg-ocaml-maint.alioth.debian.org/ocaml_src_pkgs.html

You can even take a look at our subversion repository:
http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/pkg-ocaml-maint

Which contains more libraries -- some are not released.

Concerning GODI, i think you can "hack" something to auto download
everything which are referenced in GOD build, considering that getting 
the GODI build script is only a matter of doing a subversion checkout.

(taking a short look at GODI, give me, for cryptokit
Makefile:
MASTER_SITES= http://caml.inria.fr/distrib/bazar-ocaml/
distinfo:
SHA1 (cryptokit-1.2.tar.gz) = 95f0bb53dad3e006c97fb573e0bc19c6c47c3ef7
Size (cryptokit-1.2.tar.gz) = 106543 bytes

which should be enough to download cryptokit for GODI... but i agree
there is some works to do.
)

You also have PXP and OCsigen in GODI (but not PagodaCF i think).

I think that standard library should be as small as possible. Most of
the user don't need to have most of the modules provided by it (in fact,
i would have like NOT to have Graphics/LablTK/Unix in ocaml, that will
have made things more simple and more extendable for everyone).

Being able to have an efficient way of distributing library is difficult
but it is what made things powerful.

Regards,
Sylvain Le Gall