GODI 20060118 review

GODI library provides an advanced programming environment for the Objective Caml (O'Caml) language. From INRIA (who created O'Caml)

License: Freeware File size: 1577K Developer: Gerd Stolpmann

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GODI library provides an advanced programming environment for the Objective Caml (O'Caml) language.

From INRIA (who created O'Caml) you can get the O'Caml compiler and runtime system, but this is usually not enough to develop applications. You also need libraries, and there are many developers all over the world providing them; you can go and pick them up. But it is a lot of work to build and install them.

GODI is a system that simplifies this task: It is a framework that automatically builds the O'Caml core system, and additionally installs a growing number of pre-packaged libraries. For a number of reasons GODI is a source-code based system, and there are no precompiled libraries, but it makes it very simple for everybody to compile them.

GODI is available for O'Caml-3.08 and 3.09. It runs on Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, NetBSD, Cygwin, HP-UX, MacOS X.

Here are some key features of "GODI":
Automatic installation of new libraries: GODI knows where a library can be downloaded, which prerequisites are needed to build it, and which commands must be invoked to compile and install it
Complete package management of the installation: A library is installed as a package (a managed set of files), so it is possible to remove it later without any hassle.
GODI implements the necessary logic to upgrade installations: Because of the way O'Caml works, all dependent libraries must be recompiled if a library is upgraded to a newer version. GODI automates this process.
Integration with the operating system: If additional C libraries are needed to build an O'Caml library, and the operating system includes them, they will usually be automatically found and used. Non-standard locations can be configured (there is only one configuration file for the whole installation).
GODI has a menu-based user interface that makes it simple to use even for beginners.
GODI tries to standardize the directory layout of library installations, so it becomes simpler to find files of interest.

Installation:

Download the GODI bootstrap tarball and unpack it with tar.
Now follow the instructions of the README file in the tarball (here the compact version): Start the first stage of the bootstrap process

./bootstrap --prefix /prefix/path

Extend PATH:

PATH=/prefix/path/bin:/prefix/path/sbin:$PATH
export PATH

Optionally: Change the file /prefix/path/etc/godi.conf, and set the variable GODI_SECTION. This variable determines which version of the O'Caml system is installed. Currently supported versions are 3.08 and 3.09.
Start the second stage of the bootstrap process

./bootstrap_stage2

Start
godi_console

and select further libraries for installation. godi_console is the menu-based user interface.

What's New in This Release:
This release upgrades to O'Caml version 3.09.1.