[opam-devel] Ideas from Node.js

[Sylvain Le Gall]

Hello,

This is something already somehow do-able with OASIS: just embed an
_oasis (more rfc822 than JSON) and use oasis2opam to convert the
_oasis to OPAM required files.

http://oasis.forge.ocamlcore.org

If OPAM dev would integrate a little more with OASIS (i.e. get rid of
oasis2opam to directly read data from _oasis distributed with upstream
package) and allow override using classic OPAM files, it will be super
easy to release OASIS package directly in OPAM.

I think the current design of OPAM regarding location of files is fine
when you design a package manager. I wonder if it will make it even
more useful to cooperate with another system more dedicated to
upstream packages like OASIS.

Regards
Sylvain

p.s. sorry for the shameless ads plug for OASIS, I still think a step
forward to cooperate between OASIS and OPAM would be a huge gain for
everyone.


2013/10/11 Guillaume Claret <guillaume at claret.me>:
> 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
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