Re: net/unison2.32, net/unison2.40 and maybe net/unison2.48: proposal to remove

[Chavdar Ivanov <ci4ic4%gmail.com@localhost>]

I have:
...
❯ pkg_info unison-2.51.2nb14
Information for unison-2.51.2nb14:

Comment:
File-synchronization tool

Requires:
font-schumacher-misc>=1.0
ocaml-lablgtk>=2.18.8nb4
gtk2+>=2.24.32nb10
ocaml>=4.08.1nb1
....

It was built 5 days ago on current pkgsrc; I tested it between two
NetBSD systems at the time, it seemed to work.

It was built with lablgtk option and the interface seemed to work.

On Mon, 28 Oct 2019 at 19:41, Greg Troxel <gdt%lexort.com@localhost> wrote:
>
> unison is a program to synchronize files among a set of computers; it in
> effect creates an occasionally-updated distributed filesystem with
> prefetched read caching and write-back caches that are synchronized only
> when you run the program.
>
> We have 4 versions of unison presently: 2.32, 2.40, 2.48 and 2.51.
> Multiple versions exist in pkgsrc because there the wire protocols are
> incompatible.
>
> In addition, the wire protocol depends on some kind of ocaml
> serialization primitive, and while this seems to have been stable up to
> and including 4.07, it seems to have changed with 4.08.  The symptom is
> an error message when using the same version of unison compiled with
> 4.07 vs 4.08.
>
> The only version maintained by upstream is 2.51, and ocaml 4.08 is the
> current release series, and as a result the standard approach is to use
> unison 2.51 built with ocaml 4.08.
>
> pkgsrc has old versions on the theory that people could use them to
> interoperate with non-pkgsrc platforms that don't have up-to-date
> software, or pehraps pkgsrc platforms that for some reason haven't been
> updated.  Until the 4.08 serialization change, this was a plausible
> theory.  I tried to use pkgsrc unison to interwork with a machine that's
> more or less Ubuntu 18.04 (LTS), with unison 2.48, and failed, I am 99%
> sure because of ocaml version skew.
>
> My theory about others is:
>
>   2.32 and 2.40 are so old that there is no one using them.  Therefore
>   we should remove them.
>
>   Given that pkgsrc has ocaml 4.08, any system other than pkgsrc that
>   has unison 2.48 or earlier almost certainly has ocaml < 4.08, and
>   therefore pkgsrc unison 2.48 built with ocaml 4.08 will not interwork.
>   Therefore any unison version built from pkgsrc (now, with how ocaml is
>   now) will not be useful for interworking with any other system.
>   Therefore there is no point to keeping unison2.48, because it gives
>   people the impression that it will work when it will not.
>
>   If one wants to use unison on other systems, the easiest path is to
>   bootstrap pkgsrc, in which case one would build unison 2.51 with ocaml
>   4.08.  This in fact works fine with the Ubuntu 18.04 system mentioned
>   above.
>
>
> So:
>
>   Is anybody even trying to use unison 2.32 or 2.40?
>
>   Is anybody successfully using a unison2.48 package built with ocaml
>   4.08.x from pkgsrc current, to interwork with any non-pkgsrc platform?
>
>   Am I missing anything?



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