[opam-devel] [RFC] OPAM files as *the* OCaml package metadata format

[Michael Grünewald]

> On 13 Apr 2016, at 16:46, Daniel Bünzli <daniel.buenzli at erratique.ch> wrote:
> 
> I think there are two problems here:  
> 
> 1) There's no support at the moment for such directories in OPAM install file

This is probably a rather minor problem, I guess. The presence of this support
could be used to tie-break otherwise equally good solutions but is probably
no show-stopper.
 
> 2) I'm not sure what os distributions think about these paths in general

This point is explicitly adressed in the FHS, which is the closest thing
to a standard in the Linux world for these matters:

   (I’m lazy so I quote Wikipedia):

    /var/lib

    State information. Persistent data modified by programs as they run, e.g., databases,     
    packaging system metadata, etc.

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem_Hierarchy_Standard

The idea a system of what should go in this directory is probably only relevant
if we use /usr or /usr/local as OPAMROOT, but for other prefixes we should be
relatively free to do what we want – but mirroring the hierarchy used in the
own’s OS prefix is probably a good thing here.