Re: various questions

[Anil Madhavapeddy <anil@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On 20 Sep 2012, at 10:03, Dave Scott <Dave.Scott@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>> 1) In order to install the xapi libraries, I need to install a number of
>> libraries, that they are different from the libraries distributed by opam.
>> The problem is that some of the libraries use some very weird installation
>> mechanisms. The xen people have solved the problem by distributed a hacked
>> version of these libraries through https://github.com/xen-org/xen-api-libs/.
>> How can I introduce an opam recipe in the opam repo that will notify the
>> installation mechanism that the libraries are available through this repo
>> and override the default recipes for the specific libraries? I tries also
>> to rewrite the default recipes for some libraries but I got stuck on
>> finding a way to generate a custom META file and I gave up. 
> 
> The long-term plan for xen-api-libs is to use the upstream packages instead
> of entirely custom ones. For example, now that "ocaml-rpc" is available
> through opam I'd like to remove the custom fork "xen-api-libs/rpc-light".
> 
> Some of the code in "xen-api-libs" is a (not very high quality IMHO) custom
> "standard library". I think we should probably switch to a better alternative,
> such as (Jane Street) Core. However in the short term we could probably just
> opam-package what we have.
> 
> Which particular packages are you having trouble with? I could take a quick
> look and see if I could help.
> 
> Also, if you're running debian you might be able to just use "apt" to fetch
> the build dependencies of xapi in your opam "system" compiler.

I think that Haris only needs all this stuff in order to compile the client
bindings, and hopefully the other thread on xen-api-client will be all he
needs to integrate his simulator with a real XCP installation.  Correct me if
wrong, Haris!

-anil