[PPL-devel] Re: RFC: packaging the PPL for RedHat and Debian

[Michael Tautschnig]

[...]
>
> It may be because byte-code needs to be regenerated by the exact
> version of the environment that will be used by the user, it may
> be because proper installation requires to detect some features
> of the available development environment, it may be because an
> index file to the available modules needs to be updated, it may
> be because optional interfaces or their documentation are best
> installed into a directory that only exists and is known if X
> is already installed.  There are a number of possible
> reasons.  In general, you cannot expect the installation procedure
> of the development environment of language X to know about some
> obscure X-PPL interface.  But the X-PPL can know about X
> and may have to in case we want to simplify the user's life.
> For example, we may decide to make the life of X-Prolog/PPL
> users simpler by installing under /usr/local/lib/X/X-<version>/...
> We can do so reliably only if X-Prolog version <version>
> is already installed.  Remember that we often work with
> software/languages that are no more than research prototypes:
> we cannot expect they always do the right thing or provide
> the same functionalities/flexibility one can find in more
> professional software.

Ok, thanks - I got the point. Although I do not fully agree to the above, 
I do not know any better and thus I opt for a single package per language 
too. Still, I will take a careful look at debian/control to see, whether 
we could find a -- from my point of view -- better solution, at least for 
debian. There are solutions, such as /etc/alternatives , that might help 
in some cases.

Thank you for your patience,
Michael