Hendrik Tews: > >>> install-script: add an install script to the new topkg package, >> >> This could work for packages that ship a static install file. But what >> happens for packages that generate their install file during the build? > > The script needs to be sufficiently complex to deal with all > possible configurations. Which is what ordinary makefiles do in > there install target. > > The downside of the install-script approach is that we would need > to maintain such scripts for all packages in the transitive > build-depends closure of opam that use topkg, for instance also > for cmdliner. > >>> perl-installer: write a replacement for opam-installer, for >>> instance in perl. >> >> This is my preference. > > Also my preference now. I am discussing this build dependency > cycle off-list also with Daniel Bünzli. There I learned that > there is already an OCaml library that can read these .install > files: opam-file-format. The perl-installer will therefore > probably be written in OCaml. > > I am also discussing with Daniel the chance that upstream solves > the problem for us by changing opam-installer such that it does > not depend on all the build-dependencies of opam. The outcome > here is not clear yet, but assuming upstream decides to go this > way, how long are we willing to wait? Or, the other way round, > how long can we wait before updating cmdliner and all the other > packages that now depend on topkg? I guess waiting for 2-3 month > would be fine, but if the delay would be longer, we should pursue > our own solution? >
Similar to the topkg-care situation, if they are going to keep it in the same tarball as opam, this improves the Debian situation only marginally since we'd have to do that source-duplication thing again. Unlike topkg-care, we can't ignore opam-install. opam is much bigger than topkg, we would have to duplicate more. What is the tool that actually generates these .install files? Instead of "opam-installer --script" that converts these files into a script, maybe we can ask them to write a "gen-install-file --script" that directly generates a script? We could enable this in Debian whereas it could be disabled by default elsewhere. That shouldn't be too hard right? X -- GPG: ed25519/56034877E1F87C35 GPG: rsa4096/1318EFAC5FBBDBCE https://github.com/infinity0/pubkeys.git
