opam pin remove behaviour

[dbuenzli]

I think this used to work in the v2 betas but it seems it no longer.

When you release you usually have the package you release as a pin on the current version X. You submit to the opam repo version X+1. Then when you opam update and have the update X+1 from the OCaml opam repository, you want to remove the pin and recompile with X+1. The current behaviour when you opam pin remove is to recompile with X which is annoying if your package has many deps, since you have to follow with a recompile with X+1.

[rjbou]

It's only if version X is present in the repo. It has been designed that way, since 1.2.1.
(sorry for delay)

[dbuenzli]

I don't understand your answer.

[dbuenzli]

If that's not clear what I'm asking is that when you remove a dev pin it tries to install the latest version of the package not the version that was there when you pinned.

[rjbou]

It's clear :) What I wanted to say (with few words) is that there is two processes:

• unpin package version X, and version X exists in opam repository → opam reinstall package version X
• unpin package version X, and version X absent from opam repository → opam reinstall package to its last version (X+1 here)

It's a design choice, that can be discussed ofc.

[dbuenzli]

Thanks. There are a few things that are related to this which are

#3202
#2932

[dbuenzli]

IIRC there's actually a workaround -- the problem is that I usually forget about it and blindly issue an opam pin remove cmdliner and then I'm very sad. I think what you have to do is opam pin remove PKG -n and then opam upgrade PKG.

I was always a bit uncomfortable with it because you basically you go through an inconsistent switch state.

But if people consider that's good enough maybe it's not worth changing/complexifying things and this can be closed. (I let you do if you think so)

[rjbou]

After discussion with @AltGr, it makes sense to remove that specific behaviour, in order to always have the last repo version of the newly unpinned package.

[rjbou]

Thanks!

[dbuenzli]

Excellent !