[isabelle-dev] OCaml 4.06.0 drops nums.cma

[Makarius]

On 07/06/18 09:49, Lars Hupel wrote:
>> So we could provide "isabelle opam" as wrapper for something like "opam
>> --root $ISABELLE_OPAM_HOME/$ISABELLE_PLATFORM64" as well as "isabelle
>> opam_init" for the specific compiler version setup. Our component wiring
>> would also provide ISABELLE_OCAML and ISABELLE_OCAMLC settings for the
>> result.
> 
> Do you intend to provide such a component for the 2018 release?

I was asking myself the same question yesterday: anything added at this
stage needs to have some significance.

I have experimented a bit more with Cygwin64: its opam package pulls in
a lot of extra things, including Python. Generally, opam appears to be a
"developer" tool: it requires the canon of old-style build tools like
make, m4 etc. -- none of the OS platforms provides that by default.

So "isabelle opam" would be mainly an administrative tool: the single
"opam" executable for all platforms and a shell script around it. No
ambitions to make this generally available for regular Isabelle users.
We could put it into the "components/optional" category.


Does this minimal approach make any sense, and solve the imminent
administrative problems? In particular without a decision yet about
ISABELLE_OCAML_VERSION vs. ISABELLE_OCAML / ISABELLE_OCAMLC?


	Makarius