OPAM Libraries

Maintenance

The opam update command refreshes all your package repositories. The opam upgrade command recompiles any outdated libraries. You need to run this once per compiler installed, so opam switch between them.

If you run into any problems with OPAM, then first ask on the MirageOS mailing list, or report a bug. It is safe to delete ~/.opam and just start the installation again if you run into an unrecoverable situation, as OPAM doesn't use any files outside of that space.

Development

There are two kinds of OPAM repositories: stable released versions of packages that have version numbers, and dev packages that are retrieved via git or darcs (and eventually, other version control systems too).

To develop a new package, create a new opam-repository Git repo.

$ mkdir opam-repository
$ cd opam-repository
$ git init
$ mkdir packages
$ opam repository add mypkg .

This will configure your local checkout as a package repository, and OPAM will pull from it on every update. Each package lives in a directory named with the version, such as packages/foo.0.1, and requires three files inside it:

• foo.0.1/url : the URL to the distribution file or git directory
• foo.0.1/opam : the package commands to install and uninstall it
• foo.0.1/descr : a description of the library or application

It's easiest to copy the files from an existing package and modify them to your needs (and read the doc for more information). Once you're done, add and commit the files, issue an opam update, and the new package should be available for installation (opam install) or upgrade (opam upgrade).