Install issues/dependencies pplacer OCaml

[uloeber]

Hi all,
I tried to install checkM on our cluster and failed. One of the admins was investigating the issues and replied:

I think this means that you need Python 2 (this is an old style “print”
statement).

I just looked at the list of dependencies and noticed that it requires
pplacer, which has only recently been removed from Guix as it depends on
an old version of OCaml (4.01) which is known to have an unfixed
security vulnerability. It could not be built with a newer version of
OCaml.

See also matsen/pplacer#359 and
matsen/pplacer#354.

Can you somehow investigate and fix these issues? This would be very nice!

Best wishes,
Ulrike

[donovan-h-parks]

Hello. CheckM requires Python 2. I don't maintain pplacer, but binaries for Linux can be downloaded directly so there is no need to compile it from source:
https://matsen.fhcrc.org/pplacer/