[Teaching] Asking teachers: what support would you want to distribute OCaml to students ?

[Louis Gesbert]

On how to provide a set of libraries to install, the following is on its way to the FAQ:

«
### Easily provide a set of packages for students to install

The easiest way is to create a package with your prerequisites as `depends` and
have them pin that. A quick way to host the file is to use a
[Gist](https://gist.github.com). Create one with minimal contents and listing
your packages as dependencies -- the file name **has** to be `opam`:

```
opam-version: "1.2"
name: "ocaml101"
version: "0.1"
maintainer: "Louis Gesbert <louis.gesbert at ocamlpro.com>"
depends: [ "menhir" { = "20140422" }
           "merlin" { >= "2" }
           "ocp-indent"
           "ocp-index" ]
```

Save that and get the `HTTPS clone URL`. All that is needed then is to run:

```shell
$ opam pin add ocaml101 <HTTPS clone URL>
```

Furthermore, `opam update` will then pick up any modification you made to the gist.
»

Cheers,
Louis


Le jeudi 27 novembre 2014, 18:23:40 Louis Gesbert a écrit :
> Thanks for the feedback!
> 
> > Things, I would love:
> > - being able to give them a sort of meta-package requiring a set of libraries
> It's possible to define one within a repository. Or, more directly, it should work to host an archive containing an `opam` file somewhere, and then have them run `opam pin URL`.
> I'll check if that works and document it somewhere (OPAM FAQ?) if that turns out to be useful.
> 
> > - perhaps some support to get access to the sources (perhaps it exists but I haven’t seen it), sometimes I push them into looking at the code of the libraries and they need to get it (or browse github). Why not also the doc?
> OPAM 1.2 added the `opam source <package>` command. Damn useful :)
> 
> Hope that helps!
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Teaching mailing list
> Teaching at lists.ocaml.org
> http://lists.ocaml.org/listinfo/teaching
> 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ocaml.org/pipermail/teaching/attachments/20141202/62e4c8ee/attachment.html>