-
-Policy for the packaging of ocaml libraries and programs (version 0.4)
+Policy for the packaging of ocaml libraries and programs (version 0.6)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
- 1) User installed libraries.
+ 1) User installed libraries
Debian package installed ocaml related stuff install per default under
- /usr/lib/ocaml/<ocaml_version> (that is /usr/lib/ocaml/3.06 for
- ocaml 3.06).
+ /usr/lib/ocaml/<ocaml_version> (that is /usr/lib/ocaml/3.08 for
+ ocaml 3.08).
User installed stuff cannot by policy go under this directory, since the
/usr tree is for dpkg handled packages alone. As thus, user installed
stuff should go into /usr/local/lib/ocaml/<ocaml_version> (that is
- /usr/local/lib/ocaml/3.06 for ocaml 3.06).
+ /usr/local/lib/ocaml/3.08 for ocaml 3.08).
Findlib knows about this, and will install user installed stuff into the
right place. But this does not resolve the problem of user stuff which
/usr/lib/ocaml/<ocaml_version>/stublibs, as can be seen in the
/usr/lib/ocaml/<ocaml_version>/ld.conf file.
- 2) dynamically loaded stub libraries and ld.conf handling.
+ 2) Dynamically loaded stub libraries and ld.conf handling
Starting from ocaml 3.05, ocaml now puts all dll.so files into a common
stublibs directory, so the ocaml-ldconf tool for handling the ld.conf
- file is not needed anymore, but we will still keep it aroung until all
- libraries are ported. ocaml-ldconf is now declared deprecated, and will
- be removed in the near future, probably at the time of the ocaml 3.07
- release, and outputs a warning in this sense when a package still using
- it get installed.
+ file is not needed anymore, but we will still keep it around until all
+ libraries are ported. Since ocaml 3.08, ocaml-ldconf is now deprecated
+ and removed.
Notice that user installed dll.so files should go into
/usr/local/lib/ocaml/<ocaml_version>/stublibs which is searched before
/usr/lib/ocaml/<ocaml_version>/stublibs.
- Ocaml-ldconf handled the ld.conf file in a different way than what ocaml
- does. There are three involved files, /var/lib/ocaml/ld.conf which is
- handled by dpkg and its dh_ocamlld generated postinst/prerm script,
- /etc/ocaml/ld.conf which the sysadmin can adapt to its needs, and finally
- /usr/lib/ocaml/ld.conf which is generated from the previous two by
- ocaml-ldconf. Since many libraries don't know about this,
- /usr/lib/ocaml/ld.conf will be made read only (except for the
- ocaml-ldconf tool).
-
- Ocaml library packager should install the stub libraries (dll.so) into
- /usr/lib/ocaml/stublibs, so no further meddling with the ld.conf file is
- needed. If (for whatever unrecommended reasons) a separate stub library
- is wanted, then a call to dh_ocamlld should be added in the debian/rules
- file as follows :
-
- dh_ocamlld -p<package> <dir1> <dir2> ...
-
3) Findlib and META files
Findlib [2] provides a tool (namely "ocamlfind") to handle OCaml libraries
Meta information regarding a library are contained in files (usually one
for each library), named "META" files, contained in the library directory.
For example: the META file for the lablgtk [3] library is named "META" and
- has path /usr/lib/ocaml/3.06/lablgtk/META, where "/usr/lib/ocaml/3.06" is
+ has path /usr/lib/ocaml/3.08/lablgtk/META, where "/usr/lib/ocaml/3.08" is
the main OCaml installation directory and "lablgtk" is the lablgtk library
directory.
find it (easily checkable doing "ocamlfind list"), installing it in the
library directory is usually a good solution, but others are possible.
If the META file isn't available upstream, the maintainer should
- write one, include it in the debian package and suggest the upstream to
+ write one, include it in the Debian package and suggest the upstream to
include it in next release.
Writing a META file is easy and usually takes a 5-minute-work, for more
information have a look at the Findlib manual [4], at the several META
- files provided by other packages (e.g. lablgtk, pxp, pcre, nestring,
+ files provided by other packages (e.g. lablgtk, pxp, pcre, netstring,
lablgl, ...) or ask on the debian-ocaml-maint ML [1] for help.
-
4) Ocaml library packages
A package, named xxx, which provides ocaml libraries should be split as
- libxxx-ocaml will provide the shared library stubs, and all other
stuff needed to run a dynamic loading ocaml bytecode executable that
links into this library.
- It should depend on ocaml-base as well as any other library needed.
+ It should depend on ocaml-base (or ocaml-base-nox, see section 8)
+ as well as any other library needed.
- libxxx-ocaml-dev will provide the rest of the library package, in
- fact anything needed to developp programs using the library.
+ fact anything needed to develop programs using the library.
Optionally, two other packages can be split :
the modules provided by the library into one module. I am not sure this
really works right now for libraries, and i don't think upstream
libraries will be moving to this scheme anytime soon (unless we actively
- lobby for it) so this is just a recomendation for now.
-
+ lobby for it) so this is just a recommendation for now.
5) Ocaml program packages
- the package debian/rules should build the native code executable if
supported on the architecture it is built on, and fall back to building
the bytecode version if no working native code compiler is available.
- And exeption to this are the executables who are small or not time
+ And exception to this are the executables who are small or not time
critical, which may be built only as bytecode executable. It is the
decision of the individual maintainers to choose this, maybe guided by
- the practic of the upstream author.
+ the practice of the upstream author.
- all bytecode executables should be dynamic loading, so as to not bloat
the archive. However, there may be special cases, were using statically
6) Caml C headers
- On debian systems, the caml C headers are encoutnered under
+ On debian systems, the caml C headers are encountered under
/usr/include/caml, as it should be. A /usr/lib/ocaml/<ocaml_version>/caml
symlink is provided for backward compatibility of non debian maintained
packages, but using them is considered broken for debian packages.
package, it cannot (yet) be a versioned dependency. The version
dependency should thus be carried by the ocaml dependency.
- Notice that it is only usefull to use the nativecode compilers when the
+ Notice that it is only useful to use the nativecode compilers when the
package contains especially large source files or is very large. Mostly
when this is the case, the upstream authors will recommend the use of
nativecode compilers in these cases.
The ocaml libraries should always depend on the exact version of ocaml
they were build with. Since ocaml 3.06-13, the ocaml and ocaml-base
- package now provide virtual packages called ocaml-3.06-1 and
- ocaml-base-3.06-1 respectively.
+ package now provide virtual packages called ocaml-3.08 and
+ ocaml-base-3.08 respectively.
+
+ Since ocaml 3.07.2a-3, ocaml is split in ocaml-nox and ocaml and
+ ocaml-base is split in ocaml-base-nox and ocaml-base. The -nox packages
+ contain all the files the packages used to contain except the files
+ related to the Graphics module and labltk. This has been done in order to
+ avoid unnecessary dependencies to X libraries. The -nox packages should
+ be used in the dependencies when neither Graphics nor labltk is used in the
+ program.
- Ocaml libraries should build depend on ocaml-3.06-1 :
+ Ocaml libraries should build depend on ocaml-3.08 :
- Build-Depends: ocaml-3.06-1
+ Build-Depends: ocaml-3.08
+
+ (or ocaml-nox-3.08 if the library does not require X stuff)
Ocaml library runtime packages (the libxxx-ocaml)
- should depend on ocaml-base-3.06-1 :
+ should depend on ocaml-base-3.08 :
- Depends: ocaml-base-3.06-1
+ Depends: ocaml-base-3.08
- And Ocaml library developpment packages (the libxxx-ocaml-dev)
- should depend on ocaml-3.06-1 :
+ (or ocaml-base-nox-3.08 if the library does not require X stuff)
+
+ And Ocaml library development packages (the libxxx-ocaml-dev)
+ should depend on ocaml-3.08 :
- Depends: ocaml-3.06-1
+ Depends: ocaml-3.08
+
+ (or ocaml-nox-3.08 if the library does not require X stuff)
- The old way of doing this (epends: ocaml (>= 3.06), ocaml (<< 3.07)) is
+ The old way of doing this (Depends: ocaml (>= 3.08), ocaml (<< 3.09)) is
deprecated
It is necessary to do this to future proof library packages, so they will
fellow maintainers, but this will probably be a post woody stuff.
Finally, i strongly recommend that all packages containing ocaml
- executables follow these same dependency rules, altough it may not be
+ executables follow these same dependency rules, although it may not be
always necessary, but again this is something recommended by the upstream
authors. As an exception, it is mandatory to add these dependencies for
executables which do dynamic loading of bytecode files, for the same
-- Sven Luther <luther@lambda.u-strasbg.fr>, Sat, 14 Dec 2002 22:18:44 +0100
findlib && META:
-- Stefano Zacchiroli <zack@cs.unibo.it>, Thu, 13 Jun 2002 21:21:52 +0200
-
-
projects / ocaml.git / commitdiff