Package: dh-ocaml Version: 0.1 Severity: wishlist Hello,
We have already discussed this issue in the following thread: http://lists.debian.org/debian-ocaml-maint/2008/01/msg00150.html No decision has been taken so far. I submit this wish here to keep track of it. I give here a short summary. I propose to allow in our policy dynamically-loadable objects such as .cma or .cmo files in non *-dev binary packages. Currently, they are allowed only in *-dev packages, but they might be needed at runtime by programs using dynamic loading (Dynlink library), such as Ocsigen. To the best of my knowledge, META files are the only information easily exploitable at runtime to deal with dependencies between libraries (and Ocsigen use them). Therefore, I also propose to put META files in non *-dev binary packages, if .cma ones are. Rationale: software using Dynlink must currently depend on *-dev packages, meaning all *.mli, *.cmi and sometimes doc installed, which can be space consuming (compared to just .cma/META files) and which users might not need at all. Here are some statistics about disk usage of libraries that have both kinds of binary packages (these are sizes of .deb files): http://lists.debian.org/debian-ocaml-maint/2008/01/msg00215.html Currently, Dynlink is only available in bytecode, but the upcoming (3.11) version of OCaml will provide a native version, with a new kind of compiled object files: .cmxs (a kind of .so for OCaml code). Putting these files into *-dev binary packages would be quite strange. And since the bytecode counterparts of .cmxs are .cmo/.cma, it would also be strange to put .cmxs in non *-dev and .cmo/.cma in *-dev. Of course, META files explicitly refer to .cmx files, and one may argue that they belong to *-dev packages because of this. First, notice that META files are usually the same on all architectures, even non-native ones, where .cmx don't exists. IMHO, Findlib is a good infrastructure for handling OCaml libraries and their dependencies, even at runtime. Besides, META files are ridiculously small, compared to what you would need to install if they were in *-dev packages. More pragmatically, since we will most likely have to handle generation of .cmxs ourselves (i.e. in packaging process), I don't suggest to massively and systematically move .cma/META files in all existing packages, but rather do it in a as-needed basis (note that I used the verb "allow" in this report). The policy should state the possibility, though. -- Stephane -- System Information: Debian Release: lenny/sid APT prefers testing APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental') Architecture: i386 (i686) Kernel: Linux 2.6.26-1-686-bigmem (SMP w/2 CPU cores) Locale: LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=fr_FR.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash dh-ocaml depends on no packages. Versions of packages dh-ocaml recommends: ii ocaml-nox 3.10.2-3 ML language implementation with a dh-ocaml suggests no packages. -- no debconf information -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
