[opam-devel] Ideas from Node.js

[Guillaume Claret]

Hello,

   To see if there is room for improvement, I was comparing OPAM with 
npm (the packages manager of Node.js) which seems to me to be one of the 
most popular packaging system today.

   Instead of three files "descr", "opam" and "url" they have just one 
"package.json" file.

   They directly use the JSON syntax to describe the packages. The 
syntax is heavier than the one of "opam" files so the advantage is not 
clear, but this syntax is already known by most programmers / text 
editors, easily described with a JSON schema and can be parsed by any 
programming language.

   Finally, the "package.json" file is located at the root of the 
sources of a project. This is a more self-contained approach. Someone 
can even install a package giving the repository Git's url, without 
registering it on a repository.

   I wonder if these changes could be good ideas for OPAM,

Regards,
Guillaume Claret