Alice v0.1.3

in release

Announcing the release of Alice v0.1.3. This is a patch release though it doesn’t make any visible changes. The purpose of the release is to add a patch which replaces the OCaml compiler version number in all lockfiles with a template placeholder. This makes it possible to change the version of the compiler that Dune expects to see in the environment when building the project. This is simplifies packaging Alice for Homebrew, and possibly for other package managers in the future.

Alice builds with Dune Package Management, however Dune (by way of it using Opam’s packaging conventions) requires that the OCaml compiler either be built as a dependency of the project or be installed system-wide with that compiler’s version stored in the lock directory. The first option is not desirable as it would make Alice very slow to install, since compiling the OCaml compiler can take a long time. The second option isn’t possible in Homebrew, since the ocaml package will be updated independently of Alice, meaning that whatever compiler version the project is configured to expect, it will see an unexpected version each time the ocaml package is update

Alice’s Homebrew formula uses a hybrid of both approaches. Its lock directory expects a compiler to be installed system-wide of some arbitrary version, and before compilation the install script replaces this version with whatever version of the OCaml compiler brew decided to install as a dependency of Alice. This way Alice’s Homebrew package can be installed relatively quickly and will continue to work as the OCaml compiler in Homebrew’s repository gets updated.

For all Alice’s other dependencies (besides the compiler), Dune installs them with its internal package management mechanism. A potential alternative to this would be to rely entirely on Homebrew to install Alice’s dependencies. This is how Alice’s Opam and Nix packages work - rely on the foreign (i.e. non-Dune) package manager to do all the package management. Currently this isn’t an option for Homebrew because most of the OCaml libraries it uses aren’t in Homebrew’s repository.

Install Alice with Homebrew by running:

brew install alicecaml/homebrew-tap/alice

Release Notes

Added