[opam-devel] opam binary snapshot

[Fabrice Le Fessant]

Is it important to target RPMs and DEBs, or would it be enough to have
binary packages _inside_ opam ? i.e. "opam install MYPACKAGE" would
install binary versions instead of source versions of MYPACKAGE and
all its dependencies ?

At OCamlPro, we have already been experimenting with this idea, so if
it is what you are looking for, and we can gather a set of sponsors to
fund turning the prototype into stable software, it would be a nice
addition to OPAM...
--Fabrice


On Thu, Oct 31, 2013 at 1:40 PM, Anil Madhavapeddy <anil at recoil.org> wrote:
> On 15 Oct 2013, at 00:36, Mika Illouz <mika at illouz.net> wrote:
>
>> Our current system involves packaging up OCaml stuff as
>> debian packages, and distributing them to ubuntu clients in binary
>> form via a internal debian repo.  This gets the ocaml dependencies
>> necessary to build stuff, even to those don't develop in ocaml, with
>> minimal cognitive overload.
>>
>> Some of my colleagues think that distributing ocaml dependencies in
>> binary form is ultimately more stable.  I am wondering whether I can
>> satisfy them, with a solution that somehow exports as binary snapshot
>> of everything under ~/.opam/4.01/  .  One idea is to define a debian
>> package for a blessed ~/.opam/4.01/ , and export it via our internal
>> debian repo.  Another idea is just export it to clients via rsync, or
>> some other shared global storage.
>
> [Ccing opam-devel and also Citrix/Rackspace folk, as this came up
> last week in XenSummit).
>
> In general, I'd like to figure out how to use OPAM to build RPMs and
> Debs just as easily as it can currently do ocamlfind installations.
> In the short-term, I suspect that if you use a system compiler and
> have enough external dependency information in the OPAM repository,
> we could get away with quite a lot by tarring up the .opam directory.
>
> This has also been a frequent request for teaching purposes, so I'd
> like to experiment with version controlling .opam -- this would just
> require hooks when adding/creating files in the subdirectory hierarchy,
> although it would probably be too slow to shell out every time
> (Thomas' cagit OCaml library may come in useful here).
>
> Dave/Jon/John, any thoughts on this?
>
> -anil
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-- 
Fabrice LE FESSANT
Scientific Advisor, OCamlPro SAS