ocaml fails on Tiger (was: Re: sudo port install mldonkey)

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Jan 8, 2008, at 03:08, Joerg van den Hoff wrote:

> On Mon, Jan 07, 2008 at 03:14:21PM -0600, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
>
>> On Jan 7, 2008, at 04:32, Joerg van den Hoff wrote:
>>
>>> On Fri, Jan 04, 2008 at 12:05:14PM -0600, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Jan 4, 2008, at 09:41, Charlse Darwin wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Mac:~ pm$ sudo port -f install mldonkey
>>>>> --->  Fetching ocaml

[snip]

>>>>> # How do I get it to skip ocaml?
>>>>
>>>> There isn't a built-in way to do that. MacPorts is designed not to
>>>> make use of any software you install outside of MacPorts. You could
>>>> possibly modify the portfile to look for ocaml in a different
>>>> directory. But what we would really like is for someone to  
>>>> figure out
>>>> why the ocaml port fails to build, and fix it.
>>>
>>> is   there   hope   (i.e.  is  the  package  still  actively
>>> maintained)?
>>>
>>> would it be helpful to "cross post" this issue on one of the
>>> ocaml lists asking for opinions/help?  if so, where to  send
>>> potential answers?  to "pguyot at kallisys.net" as
>>>
>>> `port info ocaml'
>>>
>>> tells me?
>>
>> If you want to know if a package is being actively maintained, you
>> should email the package maintainer. If "nomaintainer" is the package
>> maintainer, then it is not being maintained.
>>
>> The problems Charlse Darwin was experiencing were the result of his
>> unique setup which included a broken sed program.
>>
>> The general problems building ocaml on Tiger which were reported in
>> ticket 13583 were resolved by me 3 days ago because the maintainer
>> had not responded to the issue.
>>
>> After you "sudo port selfupdate" do you still see any problems?
>
> thanks.
>
> I upgraded to 3.10.0 already some time ago (when it appeared
> on macports) without problems (sorry for not being  specific
> in  this  respect).  _should_ I have experienced problems at
> that time??

Nope, if you were on Tiger, it should have worked fine, initially.  
See, when ocaml was first updated to 3.10.0 (r25800, 2007-06-02), it  
worked on Tiger, but not on Leopard. Then later (r30771, 2007-11-06),  
a fix was committed for Leopard, but it only worked on MacPorts  
trunk, not the latest released version of MacPorts, 1.5.2. Then the  
Leopard fix was changed (r31240, 2007-11-18), but this broke the  
build on Tiger. Then I fixed it (r32486, 2008-01-04) so the Leopard- 
specific fix was applied only on Leopard, fixing the build on Tiger.  
But by this point MacPorts 1.6.0 had been released, so Kevin restored  
the original Leopard fix (r32488, 2008-01-04). You can see the  
history of the port's changes in the Trac repository browser:

http://trac.macports.org/projects/macports/log/trunk/dports/lang/ocaml

> my question was a general one: ocaml is a very good piece of
> software so I'd like to see it supported by macports in  the
> future.

The port has a maintainer. If a maintainer is unresponsive to an  
issue for 72 hours, another committer can take care of a problem, if  
a solution is known. If you or anyone would like to take over  
maintenance of a port, or would like to co-maintain a port with the  
current maintainer, you should contact the maintainer. If you get no  
response from the maintainer after repeated attempts, we can consider  
the maintainer gone and change it to nomaintainer, or to yourself or  
anyone else who wants to take it over.