[opam-devel] OPAM Roadmap -- what next ?

[Simon Cruanes]

Hi!

Nice list you have :)

I'll just add my own selfish wish to the "features" list, although it's
linked to several of your points: having a switch that installes
system-wide, in /usr/local/, for non-opam users to see.

My two cents on the current list:
- agnosticity seems mostly useful for porting opam to coq - most other
  languages have their own package manager. Fine, but is the coq team
  willing to work on that?
- the list of features seems the most useful to me (of course, I don't
  use windows), in particular tracking installed files and improving
  security, binary packages, and hooks.

Good luck!

Le Wed, 17 Dec 2014, Louis Gesbert a écrit :
> Hi all,
> 
> with some lag after the 1.2 release, I'd like to open some space for a collective discussion of the priorities for where the energies should go next. We have mainly 3 directions for improvements: first, portability, with the main goal of a Windows version. Second, agnosticity, with the goal to make OPAM more generic, and try and open it to users outside of the OCaml community (wouldn't OPAM for Haskell be fun ?). Third, there are always lots of features and improvements that have been asked for, and would improve the experience of current users.
> 
> So here is a summary of what I've gathered. Feel free to add your own.
> 
> 
> 
> ## Portability
> 
> - **Rewrite parallel command engine.** / done.
> 
> - **Native system manipulation (cp, rm, curl...).**
>   These are mostly done through calls to the shell or external programs. It's
>   not very pretty but quite pragmatic actually... until we want to run on
>   Windows without Cygwin. Anyway, this wouldn't be the end of portability
>   issues.
> 
> - **Windows support.**
>   for OPAM itself to begin with. This should be pretty close.
> 
> - **Packages on Windows.**
>   Locate common issues and attempt to find generic fixes.
> 
> - Allow **direct use of more solvers** or solver servers.
> 
> - **Support cross-compilation**
>   This is quite an open issue at the moment.
> 
> ## Agnosticity
> 
> - **Isolate OCaml-specific stuff.**
>   E.g. specific opam-file variables. See ocaml-specific.md
> 
> - **Separate as plugins**
>   To open the gate to OPAM without these plugins, or with other ones
> 
> - **Compilers as packages.**
>   This should mostly work now, but needs some tests and strengthening. The main
>   thing still to do is to handle the system compiler changes properly ; that
>   part should be made more generic anyway (see discussion on hooks)
> 
> ## Features
> 
> - A **provides** field. Generally useful, but particulary so with
>   compilers-as-packages
> 
> - Releasing the **"features" field** for easier package configuration
> 
> - **Track installed files**
> 
> - **Improve security**: just checking md5s is quite light ; package scripts can
>   write anywhere
> 
> - **OS-specific handling of dependencies** (eg dependencies on packages from the
>   OS) with plugins (#1519)
> 
> - Specify and implement **hooks**
> 
> - Find a nicer way to **share dev repos** / undoable "pinning sources"
> 
> - **Per-switch remotes**
> 
> - **Multi-switch packages**
> 
> - Support for (automatic generation of) **binary packages**
> 
> - Nicer **ocamlfind interaction**
> 
> 
> 
> Cheers,
> Louis Gesbert

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-- 
Simon

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