[opam-devel] Packaging guidelines

[Anil Madhavapeddy]

On 20 May 2014, at 18:21, Dario Teixeira <darioteixeira at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> Just a couple of quick questions regarding packaging guidelines:
> 
> 1) Is there a standard way to specify that a package depends on version 3.x
>    of another package, besides the obvious {>= "3" & < "4"}?

That's pretty much it.

> 
> 2) To avoid uncontrolled growth of the repository, is there a policy regarding
>    the deletion of older packages?  If, for instance, I am about to release
>    version 1.2 of application package Foo, and versions 1.0 and 1.1 already
>    exist, then the oldest (version 1.0) could be kicked out of the repo.
>    In the case of libraries, extra care would be needed to make sure no
>    broken dependencies would arise, of course.

Right now, it's more convenient to keep older versions in the repository
since they can all be bulk-built more easily.  I estimate it'll be a year
or so before it begins to be worth splitting out the repository.

Note that you can always keep a custom remote with just the cut of
libraries that you need -- you just need to take care to ensure you
don't have broken constraints. (but `opam-admin make` can help)

-anil