On Mon, Oct 14, 2002 at 06:42:56PM +0200, Alain Frisch wrote:
> Of course findlib is useful !  But you can't do:
> 
> ocamlfind fetch some_package
> 
> to have findlib automatically download and install the last version of
> some_package and its dependencies. I guess this is the kind of
> fonctionality people mean when referring to a package manager.

Ok, anyway this feature can be easily implemented in the findlib
package, but a lot of new issues raise then.
Mainly:

1) does we really need such a feature, aren't distribution born for such
   issues? (obviously I'm thinking about the Linux world here)

2) if we really need such a feature (for example just to have
   transparent access to packages between different linux distributions
   or between linux and windows and mac and ... worlds) who is
   responsible to keep an archive of available package gettable via
   ocamlfind or whatevere else?
   CPAN, APT, and other approaches work because someon set up an
   official or de-facto-official archive (Well, APT also support other
   repositories, but official one are the most used and trusted ...).

3) ocaml packages are usually distributed as source packages and we have
   not a standardized way to build and install them, the success of
   CPAN, APT, are due to the facts that _or_ the distribution is in
   binary form with standardadized file system sructure _or_ the
   distribution is in source form with standardized compilation and
   installation procedure

Cheers.

-- 
Stefano Zacchiroli - undergraduate student of CS @ Univ. Bologna, Italy
zack@cs.unibo.it | ICQ# 33538863 | http://www.cs.unibo.it/~zacchiro
"I know you believe you understood what you think I said, but I am not
sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant!" -- G.Romney
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