Re: [RFU] ocaml-4.00.1-1

["Yaakov (Cygwin/X)" <yselkowitz@users.sourceforge.net>]

On 2013-06-11 10:37, Damien Doligez wrote:
>> Given what Yaakov said, wouldn't it make sense to provide the former
>> ocaml libs and start using a versioned runtime lib approach?
>
> I'm not sure I understand exactly what you mean, but providing several
> versions of the libraries is not going to work because they are strongly
> tied to the compiler version. If we want different versions of the
> libraries to coexist, I think the only simple solution is to use a new
> package name for each release of OCaml. That would probably force
> every library to follow the same pattern, leading to a confusing
> proliferation of packages.

Agreed.

> The strong typing of OCaml gives strong guarantees to the users and
> imposes strong constraints on linking. Stronger than can be handled
> by "normal" package managers. This problem has been studied and solved
> for the Debian package manager [1] but the solution is heavy-weight.
> Nowadays, the preferred solution among OCaml developers is to use
> OPAM, a dedicated package manager for OCaml programs and libraries.

That's not necessarily practical for a software distribution.  Given the 
nature of OCaml, we'll just need to have mass rebuilds for each point 
release.


Yaakov