Re: opam package should depend on ocaml-compiler-libs

[ASSI <Stromeko@nexgo.de>]

Brian Inglis writes:
>>> Cygwin packages are granular and dependencies are functional: which of the
>>> Cygwin packages opam and opam-installer uses Cygwin package ocaml-
>>> compiler-libs, or does opam use another ocaml package to build?

>> I don't quite understand your question - opam is OCaml's package manager.

The question was if adding ocaml-compiler-libs to the opam requirements
is sufficient or if there are other packages that need to be added as
requirements for opam.  A second related question is if any of the
existing ocaml packages are missing dependencies, especially to
ocaml-compiler-libs.  Finally, since opam is split into two packages on
Cygwin, which of these needs the requirement.

>> It can either compile OCaml itself from sources or use the OCaml
>> installed by the system's package manager. In the second case, it
>> quite reasonably assumes that the OCaml which has been installed is
>> the one the OCaml developers intended which includes its
>> compiler-libs package. Given that opam depends on ocaml, it should
>> also depend on ocaml-compiler-libs, therefore.
>
> What you or the ocaml developers assume does not matter: what matters is how the
> package works. If you do not understand the question and can not provide the
> answer, I can see why the maintainer made his choice: he probably never used the
> packages, just ran any tests included.

That sounds unnecessarily harsh to me.  It would however be helpful if
the opam maintainer could have a look, since he is undoubtedly much more
aware of the issues on both the OCaml and Cygwin sides than any one of
us and could probably explain why the packages are built the way they
are.

> It appears that neither ocaml nor opam use ocaml-compiler-libs, otherwise the
> cygwin build and packaging software would include it, so which package in the
> ocaml suite actually binds the ocaml-compiler-libs to do its job, or does that
> package just provide dynamic libraries which are expected to be present when
> anyone runs ocaml programs?
> In which case users would be expected to manually install the package
> ocaml-compiler-libs.

It's not uncommon that these captive "package managers" assume a certain
environment without depending directly on it, so you'll indeed have to
manually add the pre-requisites as manual requirements for the Cygwin
package.  That doesn't solve the problem that usually language
environments that come with their own package manage don't quite play
nice with the system package manager, especially if the system is not
GNU/Linux.


Regards,
Achim.
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