On Thu, May 20, 2021 at 09:43:07AM +0100, Anil Madhavapeddy wrote: > On 19 May 2021, at 18:38, David Allsopp <david.allsopp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > > Richard W.M. Jones wrote: > >> (I've added a few opam devs to CC) > >> > >> On Tue, May 18, 2021 at 10:14:41PM +0200, Miro Hrončok wrote: > >>> opam orphan 1 > >> weeks ago > >> > >> I didn't notice that opam had been orphaned. This package is the tool > >> used for source packaging of OCaml packages under $HOME > >> (https://opam.ocaml.org/). > >> > >> I don't especially like language-specific tools for managing packages, > >> because of the usual problems that have been widely discussed elsewhere > >> and it's not profitable to rehash them again. This is my personal view. > >> > >> The question is if we want to keep this in Fedora or not? ie. As an > >> official Fedora package versus something that opam maintainers would > >> provide themselves as a download. > > > > Thanks for the heads-up - this very week I've wanted to see what could be done > > to get opam into EPEL, so discovering it's orphaned in Fedora is a bit of a blow! > > > > We'd be happy to take on its maintenance. IIUC it needs to be readopted by August > > when F35 is branched, or does an orphaned package get dropped earlier than that? > > > > FWIW, the aim from the OCaml Community perspective is that opam is installed and > > maintained by the OS's native package manager, so we'd obviously prefer it to stay > > that way. > > Likewise, to echo David I'm happy to co-maintain with him in Fedora. > However, was there was a previous maintainer who dropped it and can > we assist anyone else who would like to maintain it? We've obviously > got a scaling problem with the number of distros we support and test > at the moment from the core (and small) opam development team. Andy orphaned it which means he doesn't want to maintain it in Fedora any longer. I don't necessarily want to question that decision. I assume he made for his own good reasons. > Richard W. M. Jones wrote: > > > I don't especially like language-specific tools for managing packages, > > because of the usual problems that have been widely discussed > > elsewhere and it's not profitable to rehash them again. This is my > > personal view. > > I'd like to push back against this, since there's an obvious need for > language-specific managers since every single language has one. Well the history of software development is one of fashion-driven trends and poor decisions, and here we are. Single language managers don't deal with issues such as: - How to manage security updates. - How to develop software written in multiple languages. - How to centrally distribute packages to many machines. - How to sign-off bit-for-bit identical software through a development->QE->production workflow. - Minimizing distro size on disk and in memory. - Having a single method to manage/build/patch all packages on a system. Some of this is now being reinvented badly with containers. > The reason opam exists is that it supports _all versions_ of OCaml > libraries published, and so the database allows developers to > immediately assemble a reasonable universe of packages for their > purposes. > > Fedora packages serve a different need, which are to find a single > set of OCaml libraries and a single compiler version which can build > packages for applications written in OCaml. In the medium term we could > use the metadata in opam-repository to generate RPMs that are well-meshed > with Fedora's standards, and help with compiler version upgrades by > finding a set of versions of OCaml packages that are compatible with > the package set. There is some tooling written by Jerry James to turn opam metadata into Fedora packages and with a bit more coordination and development this could be mostly automated. (Fedora package review gets in the way, but I think even most Fedora developers think Fedora package review is the wrong approach.) Rich. -- Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones Read my programming and virtualization blog: http://rwmj.wordpress.com libguestfs lets you edit virtual machines. Supports shell scripting, bindings from many languages. http://libguestfs.org _______________________________________________ devel mailing list -- devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe send an email to devel-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Do not reply to spam on the list, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure
