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the-lambda-church / dmlenu

a clone of dmenu written in OCaml.
MIT License
46 stars 5 forks source link

opam package? #11

Open gasche opened 7 years ago

gasche commented 7 years ago

Could we have an opam release of dmlenu? I just found out about the project and would like to use it as a drop-in dmenu replacement, I would expect opam install dmlenu to do something.

(There is the issue that the presentation as a library sort of suggests that everyone should build their own dmenu-replacement from it, while I would prefer to have an executable available out of the box. This suggests that maybe main could be made into an actual binary instead of just an "example". But at least having the library available through opam would be nice.)

asmanur commented 7 years ago

The problem being that dmlenu's dev died down before it got an actual userbase (apart from Armael). There has been some discussions to start the dev again but we've been quite busy. (And I'm not even a user of dmlenu anymore as of now). To be fair, unless there is a regain of interest (perhaps by Armael) I don't see the point of distributing an opam package of dmlenu. Moreover, if you want to replace dmenu by dmlenu, you will not gain a lot (the interface is a bit prettier but that's it.)

gasche commented 7 years ago

@Armael, I'm interested in using dmlenu instead of dmenu. Would you be willing to take over package ownership, and provide an OPAM package and distribution strategy?

trefis commented 7 years ago

I don't quite understand why you are interested if not for the library aspect of the thing. Using the example emulating dmenu_run instead of dmenu_run itself won't bring you anything, so what's the point?

As for the library aspect of the thing, it's a nice idea, except the API and its implementation are... let's just say "not that good".

gasche commented 7 years ago

I would be happy to replace a small and not-perfect utility written in C by a small and not-perfect utility written in OCaml in my user environment. Knowing that I can modify it easily is also good. I also hoped the design would be nice, but you are suggesting that there are things to improve there.

trefis commented 7 years ago

I would be happy to replace a small and not-perfect utility written in C by a small and not-perfect utility written in OCaml in my user environment.

OK. What follows is somewhat unrelated to the current issue but: do you really want to be using opam to manage programs that you do not plan to work on, are not tied to your ocaml environment, and (apparently) plan to use regardless of the switch you're currently in, etc.?

Armael commented 7 years ago

@gasche note that at the moment, you can pin this repository in opam and get the dmlenu binary as a drop-in replacement for dmenu_run. I personally do not see the point of not distributing an opam package of dmlenu.

I also do not dislike the current API of dmlenu; it may be not perfect in the eyes of the authors, but as it is now I think it is usable and does the job. So far I only understand the authors insisting that dmlenu is and should be dead as a coquetterie. I can submit a PR to opam-repository for dmlenu if anyone agrees on that.