The dependencies for the opam package in the Cygwin repository are incomplete. Since setup.ini doesn't support "optional" or "advised" dependencies (at least I don't think it does), there are choices for how many dependencies are added, which I leave to the maintainer.
As a minimum, please could libX11-devel and flexdll be added as a dependency for the opam package, as not having those packages installed creates subtle issues for new users (and it turns out there are a few!). The first command any opam user must run is `opam init` and this will fail if any of diff, tar, patch, unzip and *either* wget *or* curl cannot be found. I'd suggest therefore that diffutils, tar, patch, unzip and curl be added as dependencies. `opam init` will also complain, but not fail, if any of cc, make and m4 are missing, so gcc-core, make and m4 would be good additional dependencies. opam will either use a preinstalled ocaml or will compile a new one from scratch. The ocaml package could be added as a dependency (this is certainly what Ubuntu, and I believe several other Linux distributions do), although it is not compulsory and indeed with our forthcoming opam 2.0 release, unnecessary. If there is not a preinstalled ocaml, then `opam init` will seek to compile one, which requires the gcc-core and make packages. OCaml's configure script disables features if libX11-devel and flexdll are not installed and builds a subtly different ocaml, which has caused surprise for new users as the error message from subsequent build systems is slightly obscure. Unlike other dependencies which cause errors if not present, these do not and if subsequently installed then require the user to recompile ocaml, which is time-consuming. Therefore, although they're not strictly dependencies, it would very helpful if libX11-devel and flexdll were both automatically installed with opam. Finally, normal use of opam also interacts with source code repositories. It would be advisable, though not compulsory, to depend on rsync and also the git and mercurial packages. So, in summary, the following dependencies would be good to have added to the opam package, in descending order of importance: flexdll libX11-devel diffutils tar patch unzip curl (or wget, if preferred) gcc-core make m4 rsync git mercurial ocaml Thanks! David -- Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/ Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
