[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:
>> Oasis may are may not become the standard OCaml package specification
>> tool, but it is widely used so I think it's fair if it is better
>> supported by OPAM than alternatives.
>
> Right, this is indeed a feature requested by many people, than I can hear. This is tracked and discussed in [1] and I'm fine to try to implement the proposed solution in 1.1 (I've just updated the issue's release target).
>
> [1] https://github.com/OCamlPro/opam/issues/156
>
>> It really shouldn't be that hard to automate the
>> process of updating OPAM metadata (including version constraints)
>> based on changes in Oasis package specifications.
>
> A substantial amount of work has already been done by Christophe Troestler to automate the conversion of _oasis  into OPAM files:
>
>     $ opam install oasis2opam
>
> I'm sure this can be completed to automate the pull-request machinery as well.
>
> However, the main problem (the one I wanted to point out) still
> remains: every time you want to fix a constraint you have to change
> your _oasis, modify the package tarball, and make a new release --
> which means you can never fix constraints on already released
> packages. But I guess in this case, it's fine if the _oasis and OPAM
> files are not in sync.
>

We don't share the same POV here. If a constraints is bad it should be
fixe in the upstream version. A quick fix could be to patch it in OPAM,
but if a constraint is bad with OPAM, Debian packagers will have to do
the same kind of fix. So we should make it upsteam, not keep the fix in
OPAM.

Cheers,
Sylvain Le Gall
--
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