Introduction

GODI is a source-based package management system for the OCaml ecosystem. It provides an easy and consistent method of configuring, building, installing, upgrading, and removing software needed by OCaml developers: The OCaml compiler itself and a large list of libraries and development tools.

WODI is an extended Windows port of GODI. Its build system and package tools rely on Cygwin, but the libraries and binaries, compiled with mingw-w64 and OCaml, are independent of Cygwin.

WODI differs from the official GODI distribution in the following ways:

  • It ships compiled libraries and binaries for Windows (for 32- and 64-bit systems). You don’t need to build the OCaml compiler and third-party libraries from source. Patching and compiling packages from source is of course still possible.
  • The source code and build instructions of many packages have been patched for better Windows support.
  • It provides many often used external libraries (pcre, gmp, zlib, gtk, …) that are usually already installed on *nix systems, but are not available at default on Windows and are often difficult to install for inexperienced users.
  • There is a GTK based user interface that hides the Cygwin shell and the GODI console from casual users.
  • It provides improved Cygwin and Windows integration.
  • The installation is easier and less time consuming.

News

( Archive )

Many New Packages Available

February 24, 2013

A new build of WODI is now online.

Changes since the last build:

  • many new packages
    • a preview version of ocamleditor 1.8
    • utop with its dependencies
    • the ocaml tools from Xavier Clerc (bisect, bolt,... )
    • many small libraries, that use oasis as build tool and are therefore easy to package.
  • Self-update of godi-tools and godi-tools-gui should be possible now. You can hopefully upgrade to newer versions of godi-tools/wodi (and its binary packages) without removing your old installation manually.



New WODI Builds Online

January 12, 2013

I’ve just uploaded a new version of WODI. I’ve mainly improved WODI’s build makefiles and patched various build tools:

  • omake is now relocatable and can compile c code with mingw-w64.
  • oasis now correctly quotes command line arguments that are passed to external commands.
  • I’ve included a special version of gnu make (make2.exe) that can deal with windows paths like C:/folder/file. Some build systems generate such makefiles and cygwin’s make only supports unix paths.

Because of these changes, several additional packages could be compiled.

There are also other changes:

  • programs (ocaml toplevel, editors, ocamlbrowser,…) can now be started with links in cygwin’s root folder (and the start menu of Windows, if enabled during installation). These links call a special wrapper that cleans rudiments of other ocaml installations from the environment. It’s now easier to use several versions in parallel (eg. 32- and 64-bit, 4.00.1 and 4.01 in the future).
  • There are additional base-* packages. The existing ones have been cleaned up.
  • The installer now fetches a list of cygwin mirrors from the internet and you can choose one yourself. So it hopefully won’t break again, if they change their mirrors.
  • Some packages have been upgraded.
  • For the first time, I’ve build different binary packages for the same source packages (with different configurations). GTK+/lablgtk2 is a huge dependency and slow to install. Therefore, packages with an optional dependency on gtk+/lablgtk2 will be built twice: with and without gtk support. (It doesn’t work as expected, the bug will be fixed in the next version)

However, it’s still not possible to update WODI itself either through the gui or the command line. If you want to use the new builds, you have the re-install WODI (Currently the binary packages are always bound to a special version of godi-tools. I won’t fix this in the near feature, because I don’t like to make the format of the packages permanent at the current stage of development).

But it’s now possible to install WODI to an existing cygwin installation. For upgrade, just rename/remove your old /opt/wodi(32|64)-folder and start the installer as usual.



New WODI Homepage Online

December 31, 2012

I’ve just uploaded the new homepage :)