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Bug#827518: marked as done (ocaml: missing dependency on libncurses-dev)

Your message dated Mon, 26 Dec 2016 11:27:26 +0100
with message-id <03f68fa9-0045-1778-66a1-e81b4b712095@dogguy.org>
and subject line Re: Bug#827518: ocaml: missing dependency on libncurses-dev
has caused the Debian Bug report #827518,
regarding ocaml: missing dependency on libncurses-dev
to be marked as done.

This means that you claim that the problem has been dealt with.
If this is not the case it is now your responsibility to reopen the
Bug report if necessary, and/or fix the problem forthwith.

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-- 
827518: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=827518
Debian Bug Tracking System
Contact owner@bugs.debian.org with problems
--- Begin Message --- 
Source: ocaml
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,
The ocaml package, as well as its sister packages ocaml-nox, ocaml-base and ocaml-base-nox, are missing a dependency on libncurses-dev. This is apparent when trying to build a bytecode executable with an embedded custom runtime: 

  $ touch t.ml
  $ ocamlc t.ml -custom
  /usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lcurses
  collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
  File "t.ml", line 1:
  Error: Error while building custom runtime system
Because of this, packages that assume that they can build a custom runtime whenever they can build regular bytecode executables, which is in my opinion a fair assumption, break. A notable case where this presents a significant problem is when the OPAM package manager is used with a system OCaml compiler. Many notable packages, e.g. ocamlfind and lwt, build custom runtimes, and currently the OPAM packages have to be altered to either disable that, when 
possible, or else add an explicit dependency on ncurses-dev, through
the depext mechanism, which integrates OPAM with APT.

This is a problem because the packages themselves have no dependency on
ncurses and, indeed, the dependency is wholly unnecessary in cases where
the OCaml compiler is not built with ncurses. In effect, the OPAM repository 
has to be altered to work around a missing Debian dependency.
I expect that the Debian packages containg ocamlc would gain a hard dependency 
on libncurses5-dev, similar to how the ocaml package already has a hard
dependency on libx11-dev.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: stretch/sid
  APT prefers testing
APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'stable') 
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 4.5.0-2-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: sysvinit (via /sbin/init)

--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message --- 
On 26/12/2016 11:16, whitequark wrote:
> 
> Assuming ocaml-nox does have the dependency on libncurses5-dev the bug report
> can be closed. My initial message implies that I have tried installing ocaml-nox.
                                                   ^^^^^^^^^^

I guess there is a missing negation here. :-)

> However so much time has passed that I do not remember anything about the context,
> and thus you have exactly as much information as I do at this point.
> 

Thanks for your feedback whitequark. I am closing the bugreport now.

Regards,

-- 
Mehdi

--- End Message ---
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