[ANN] beta-release of OPAM

[Thomas Gazagnaire <thomas@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm very happy to announce the beta release of OPAM (0.9.1). OPAM is a package 
manager for OCaml to install libraries and tools from source archives. It 
supports multiple simultaneous compiler installations, flexible package 
constraints, and a Git-friendly development workflow.

The goal of this beta release is to formally introduce OPAM to the community, 
to gather some general feedback on the documentation and tools and double-check 
that we've not forgotten some useful features. I would also like to use that 
opportunity to make an official call to maintainers: if you have developed 
packages which are already in OPAM do not hesitate to claim their ownership and 
to improve their description - if your packages are not yet in, it's time to 
start packaging them! 

OPAM is developed by OCamlPro[1] and has been in alpha release since June 2012. 
It is already quite mature and has gained some nice momentum (+40 contributors, 
+300 packages).  OPAM has been initially funded by Jane Street[2] and the DORM 
EU research project, and it has received continuous help and resources from 
OCamlLabs[3].

The source code of OPAM is available on Github:
* installer: https://github.com/OCamlpro/opam
* packages and compiler descriptions: 
https://github.com/OCamlPro/opam-repository
* website: https://github.com/OCamlPro/opam2web

The documention:
* install instructions and tutorial are available http://opam.ocamlpro.com/
* the main source of documentation is 'opam --help' or 'opam <command> --help'
* user manual: 
https://github.com/OCamlPro/opam/raw/master/doc/dev-manual/dev-manual.pdf

You can report issues on github bug tracker:
* https://github.com/OCamlPro/opam/issues

The next steps for us is to focus on improving the package descriptions quality 
and the global consistency of https://github.com/OCamlPro/opam-repository. We 
will gladly accept any kind of help and support from the community to do this!  
We plan to announce the release of 1.0.0 in a couple of months, with improved 
package quality and better integration with the future OCaml platform.

Last point, if you are working in a company and that you already use OPAM, or 
plan to use OPAM, and you would like to help us ensuring it a sustainable 
future[2], you can contact us at contact@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 

On behalf of the OPAM team,
Thomas Gazagnaire

[1] http://www.ocamlpro.com/
[2] http://www.janestreet.com/
[3] http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/projects/ocamllabs/