Re: ocaml packaging dependency bug: curses vs. termcap

[Igor Pechtchanski <pechtcha at cs dot nyu dot edu>]

On Wed, 1 Sep 2004, Robert R Schneck-McConnell wrote:

> The recently produced ocaml package assumes that it will be able to find
> "-lcurses" when it links programs.  I had to download the libncurses-devel
> package to get the linker working.  I expect this should be included among
> the dependencies.  (Perhaps gcc should as well, since the ocaml linker
> expects to use gcc.)

Umm, right.  Thanks for the heads-up.  I'm a bit uncomfortable, though,
with making the ocaml package depend on both libncurses-devel and gcc,
since those are only needed for the native compiler, and people might just
want to use the bytecode interpreter...  There are a couple of solutions
besides the above: split the package into the "-bytecode" and "-native"
subpackages, where "-native" will depend on both gcc and libncurses-devel,
or simply mention this dependency in the README (as I do with "labltk").
What do people think?

> (Before that, when I rolled my own ocaml, it always linked with -ltermcap
> instead.  Forgive my ignorance, is it much better to use -lcurses
> instead?)

That was an upstream choice -- the way it now builds OOTB pulls in
-lcurses if it's installed.

> BTW thanks for creating this package, it's something I had been intending
> to do myself for months now.

So had I, but I finally had to build a distributable version of it for
work-related reasons, and figured "why not submit the package?".
	Igor
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