Description
See ocaml/ocaml.org#1169 for the overall tracking issue.
status: active
When ocaml.org first launched, the opam package manager was in its infancy. Six years on, opam has become the standard way to manage OCaml packages, and it would be good to reflect that on the main website. There is considerable duplication on some of the content (notably the installation instructions), and some complexity in how package metadata is shown on the main ocaml.org front page. Additionally, there is an urgent need to migrate the existing site from Rackspace to a new hosting provider, and so we need to refresh the deployment scripts.
In the opam developers meetings, we decided that some aspects of opam.ocaml.org that make it hard to deploy can now be changed:
- the logging of hits per-package is problematic from a GDPR perspective, and so opam.ocaml.org should turn it off
- this implies that some of the metrics around packages ("popularity") will also be turned off.
- we can replace those inaccurate hit-based metrics with something more objective, such as one based on the dependency graphs and version information.
- we want to deploy a more global CDN for package archives, and this also makes hit logging impractical.
- there is a general desire to make all ocaml.org services privacy-preserving where possible, and it was felt that package download metrics do not add enough value vs that principle.
Therefore the current plan is:
- phase 1: migrate the machine infrastructure to two new VMs, one of which is a backup. These will not have regular logging and be "stateless" in terms of serving packages. When DNS is switched over, the opam.ocaml.org site will look a little sparse due to the lack of hit counters.
- phase 2: integrate opam.ocaml.org with the ocaml.org build, while preserving the existing site. There will be some duplication of content on both sites, but drawn from the same source.
- phase 3: replace opam.ocaml.org with permanent redirects into ocaml.org. This service will likely have to run for a few years due to the number of external links pointing into the current opam.ocaml.org site.
- phase 4: archive mirror and CDN deployment. This needs speccing for a future opam release before the website needs can be determined.