[opam-devel] current opam-repository policy : who can modify a package description

[Anil Madhavapeddy]

On 22 Feb 2016, at 16:39, Hannes Mehnert <hannes at mehnert.org> wrote:
> 
> On 02/22/16 05:31 PM, Anil Madhavapeddy wrote:
>> Interesting idea -- so this would mean that OPAM has to remap
>> upstream versions into something that is a semantic version.
>> 
>> Does Elm eliminate this by mandating that libraries should
>> "natively" all be semantically versioned?  We can't do this in
>> OCaml today since there are too many upstream packages with
>> their own versioning notions.
> 
> Elm seems to check whether the API is compatible, and if not, only
> accepts a release if major is bumped:
> https://github.com/elm-lang/elm-package#version-rules
> 
> What does "own versioning notions" mean?  I'd appreciate if the
> community would enforce (by peer pressure and adequate tooling) semantic
> versioning for the main opam-repository.

I mean that there are hundreds of OCaml packages that existed
before OPAM that have their own versioning conventions (most of
which are not semantically versioned), and these are directly
mapped into OPAM package versions.

It would be incredibly useful to have an enforcement of semantic
versioning, but at this stage in the current repository would
require a mass remapping of upstream versions into the scheme.

Anil