[opam-devel] shared directory

[Anil Madhavapeddy]

It breaks the nice property that you can start a shell with "opam exec" and have it do the right thing with respect to dependent tools.  If your scripts depend on an environment variable, then they'll work, but a symlink approach isn't quite as flexible.

Having said that, if people think that the symlink is really convenient and don't care about `opam exec`, I have no objection to a symlink being maintained.

-anil

On 20 Nov 2013, at 13:53, Louis Gesbert <louis.gesbert at ocamlpro.com> wrote:

> Updating a symlink whenever you do `opam switch` wouldn't be too much of a problem indeed. What I am concerned about is that people may start using it from opam, which would break when the OPAMROOT and --root opam options are used.
>  
> But perhaps I am being too cautious ? I'm myself using a ~/opam link pointing to ~/.opam/4.01.0 ...
>  
> Best,
> Louis
>  
> Le lundi 18 novembre 2013 10:17:56 Sean McLaughlin a écrit :
> > Hi Louis,
> > 
> > What are the issues to using a symlink?  Couldn't opam switch just move it
> > around?
> > 
> > Best,
> > 
> > Sean
> > 
> > 
> > On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 3:30 AM, Louis Gesbert
> > <louis.gesbert at ocamlpro.com>wrote:
> > 
> > >  Le dimanche 17 novembre 2013 16:54:15 Sean McLaughlin a écrit :
> > >
> > > > I'm trying to package a library that installs files in share. When I had
> > >
> > > > only one compiler installed, the %{prefix}% argument sent them to
> > >
> > > > .opam/system/share. However, when I installed another compiler and made
> > > it
> > >
> > > > current, the files went into .opam/4.00.1/share. I am trying to tell the
> > >
> > > > user where to find the files. Is there a generic directory where I could
> > >
> > > > point the user? Perhaps you could make a symlink 'current' for the
> > >
> > > > current compiler?
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > You should use $(opam config var prefix)/share, or even $(opam config var
> > > share). A symlink could be an option worth considering, but it has its own
> > > issues.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Best,
> > >
> > > Louis
> > >
> _______________________________________________
> opam-devel mailing list
> opam-devel at lists.ocaml.org
> http://lists.ocaml.org/listinfo/opam-devel

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ocaml.org/pipermail/opam-devel/attachments/20131121/bd958e4b/attachment.html>