Re: About this ocaml versioning stuff
On Tue, Jul 15, 2003 at 01:58:58PM +0200, Jérôme Marant wrote:
> Selon Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr>:
>
> > > No, this is wrong. Red Hat and Mandrake, the most widely used commercial
> > > distro are using /usr/bin .
> >
> > Well, what about all the people who install stuff in any random place ?
> > I think they way outnumber any redhat or mandrake users out there.
>
> What is manualy installed doesn't count. We are discussing what's
> installed through a package manager, e.g. dpkg or rpm.
Well, why not account for all the people not doing it.
> > Also, like said, i would really like upstream to go this way also (for
> > ocamlrun) because it is the only way which really makes sense, to be
> > sure that you don't try to run your privately built bytecode programs
> > with the wrong compiler once you upgraded your ocaml packages to a new
> > and incompatible version.
>
> But why using multiple ocaml at a time? If you want to change the ocaml
> version, you need to rebuild binaries anyway. That's what we've been
> doing so far.
Ok, how you solve the special case of a binary only bytecode program
you have installed which is not buildable with the new version ?
> > > You _have to_ care for other distro because users of ocaml packages
> > > may distribute binaries that _should_ be executable on other distro.
> > > Debian _cares_ for compatibilities with others distros (that's what
> > > LSB is for).
> >
> > Yes, sure, but not at all cost. There is no reason i should go into a
> > rigid mode just because the other distros are not wanting to make some
>
> Other distros don't need to. They provide only one Ocaml at a time.
I use distro foo ocaml installation, compile my packages, give the
binary version to my client, and then get hit by a truck, or maybe my
harddisk dies or whatever. Once distrib foo updates ocaml to the new
version, this tool will become totally unusable.
> > > Why would the ocaml team support old versions of their compiler?
> >
> > Because it is more professional to do that ?
>
> As long as you can freely download the latest version, there is no
> reason to keep an old one around.
That you can see. I see at least one more than the one we spoke about
earlier, and that is to have while not all programas/libraries are
ported to the new version, maybe because there is some huge
incompatibility to the new version or something like that. OR you
thousands of coq stuff that only works with the old coq whihc needs the
old version of ocaml.
> > > > But again, it was kind of an experiment, i want feedback, and maybe we
> > > > should also get upstream opinion or the opinion of the community at
> > > > large. Maxence, can you comment on this, maybe, or ask Xavier
> > > > personnally about it ?
> > >
> > > You may need a rationale before asking ...
> >
> > Well, you can keep old (possibly closed source) bytecode programs
> > arounds with a minimal runtime system (ocamlrun and the stublibs) and
> > install the new version beside of it. Is that not a rationale enough
> > reason for it ? Even a reason why debian should do it ? And i think we
>
> None I think. One ocaml per debian release sounds sane to me.
Me too, but now is the time to discuss this with an open mind, which is
what i asked at first. There is good reasons and bad reasons for it,
let's examin it and make the choice based on it.
> > should care about this more than other distribs compatibility, even our
>
> Compatibility is important for software authors, those who ship
> binaries, I said.
And support of older versions is not ? Those who ship binaries ?
> > social contract says so. And anyway, we are the vanguard of ocaml
> > packaging, i guess others will follow suit if we do something :)))
>
> I think more and more of providing my own version of ocaml packages ...
Why, there is no decision taken yet, we are just examining the
possibilities right now, try to look at it with an open mind.
Friendly,
Sven Luther
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