Re: [Mldonkey-users] OCaml patch / Debian packages / etc

[Jérôme Marant]

MLdonkey <address@hidden> writes:

>>    AFAIK, the configure script checks for the features from the patch,
>>    and it fails when it cannot find them.
>>    In order to get rid of the use of the patch, one must modify
>>    the configure.in file, which is a very bad packaging pratice.
>
> Of course, version 1.16 was not designed to be used without the
> patch. Newer versions from CVS can compile without the patch, but
> then, without eDonkey support.

... but we want the edonkey support.

>
>>    Patching the OCaml compiler in order to integrate bugfixes in
>>    the packaging is fine and the right thing to do, but patching
>>    the OCaml compiler with new features without reporting the
>>    patch to the mainstream (from the packaging side), is a very
>>    bad pratice because you don't know who is responsible for bugs
>>    in the compiler. I'm not surprised that RedHat and Mandrake are
>>    doing so. 
>
> Right. It was just a proposal to prevent adding a new package for the
> ocaml-patched only used by mldonkey.

  I'm still thinking the best solution is to submit the patch to
  the mainstream. Once accepted, it can then be backported to the
  current OCaml release; the most important is to get the patch
  reviewed by the OCaml team. 

>
>>    Adding a new package because it is required by only one package does
>>    not seem sane to me.
>
> Well, maybe you should also remove packages from the Debian distrib
> that are used by nobody ? I found that one package requiring it could

  We, at Debian, regularly remove packages that are no longer used.

> be enough. Moreover, only a patched 'ocamlopt/ocamlopt.opt' compiler
> is required, there is no need for all the other libraries of Ocaml,
> since they can be found in the standard distribution.

  See my reply above.

Cheers,

-- 
Jérôme Marant

http://marant.org