support for binary packages

[UnixJunkie]

people using embedded systems tell me they'd like OPAM to be able to install
pre-compiled versions of packages.

I'd also like this feature but for a different reason: as a sysadmin
I like software to install fast and possibly on many hosts at the same time.

[rdicosmo]

Indeed, binary packages are quite useful for many people, but
source and binary packages are a completely different business,
and require different metadata, in particular for OCaml binaries.

Before embarking into an implementation of binary packages in
opam, I strongly recommend to read thoroughly at least this
paper

@Article{DBLP:journals/siu/DogguyGGZ11,
author = {Mehdi Dogguy and
St{'e}phane Glondu and
Sylvain Le Gall and
Stefano Zacchiroli},
title = {Enforcing Type-Safe Linking using Inter-Package Relationships},
journal = {Stud. Inform. Univ.},
volume = {9},
number = {1},
year = {2011},
pages = {129-157},
ee = {http://studia.complexica.net/index.php?option=com_content{\&}view=article{\&}id=188\%3Aenforcing-type-safe-linking-using-inter-package-relationships-pp-129-157},
bibsource = {DBLP, http://dblp.uni-trier.de}
}

and ideally, to come and spend time discussing all these issues
face to face with the OCaml Debian team.

On Mon, Feb 03, 2014 at 05:02:38PM -0800, Francois Berenger wrote:

people using embedded systems tell me they'd like OPAM to be able to install
pre-compiled versions of packages.

I'd also like this feature but for a different reason: as a sysadmin
I like software to install fast and possibly on many hosts at the same time.

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.*

Roberto Di Cosmo

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[mww42]

I am one of the embedded systems guys; compiling on my low-end ARM system is not much fun -- especially large projects like OCaml itself.
I don't see how the problem described in the article only holds for binary packages and not source-based ones: If you introduce an incompatibility (e.g. duplicate symbol) you only realize that when you re-compile all the dependents. A straight-forward solution to this would be to always increase the revision/minor version of all dependent packages on an update; if I'm not mistaken, opam already does that implicitly on the local installation.

[AltGr]

This is a long-standing feature wish that we have plans for, see https://github.com/ocaml/opam/wiki/Roadmap

[UnixJunkie]

This is linked to #629

[AltGr]

We now have tracking of installed files, so this could be used to extract binary packages (at least for packages that only do additions, which should be almost all of them)