[Caml-list] Re: AW: GODI is shutting down

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

On 24-07-2013, Thomas Gazagnaire <thomas@ocamlpro.com> wrote:
>>>>> 6. "No, all package managers should unite in this point, and only accept
>>>>> packages with oasis support. (Btw, that's homework for me.) Just do it the
>>>>> same way as we did when requiring findlib."
>>>>> 
>>>>> I disagree, people should be free to use whatever system they want.
>>>> 
>>>> The above argument, in general, is invalid.
>>> 
>>> [citation needed]
>> 
>> Indeed.
>> 
>> In which moral system would your claim:
>> 
>>  "People should be free to use whatever system they want.",
>> 
>> in general, be valid?
>> 
>> It just puzzles me that someone can claim this.
>> It is like saying that:
>> 
>>  "People should be free do do whatever they want."
>> 
>> Regardless of what particular individual believes|is_able_to_explain is right or wrong, I cannot find a single system where your claim would be valid.
>
> Right, seems that people are quite keen to argue today. What I meant
> is: given the current state of affairs in the build system world and
> the very different needs of the very different set of existing users,
> I am *very* reluctant to force anybody to use any specific build
> system.
>

OASIS is not a build system! It is a kind of makemaker (or
autoconf/automake).

The default target is to generate a build system for ocamlbuild. There
is also the options to use simple command to build and to e.g. use a
Makefile base system.

I am also reluctant to integrate other build system as target (e.g
OMake).

The good point about OASIS is that it gives you a upstream dev
definition of dependencies and constraints. This is a nice first step to
generate whatever package. I had some successes generating GODI, OPAM and
Debian packages.

OASIS has been designed so that it can be useful to upstream developper
and to packager. Upstream developper can use it to build their software
and packager can extract the very same file (_oasis) used by upstream to
generate package. Generally speaking this was a good way to solve the
obsolescene of META file (because upstream devs don't need a META it is
only used by end user, so it tends to be not up to date).

The good practice should be that if OPAM QA system find a bad
dependencies, it should tell the upstream to fix its dependencies
definition in _oasis and do a release so that all other packagers will
benefit from the bug found.

Cheers,
Sylvain Le Gall
--
Website:     http://sylvain.le-gall.net/
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