Re: [Caml-list] OCaml's manual 4.06.0+beta2

[octachron <octa@polychoron.fr>]

Dear OCaml users,

With the upcoming release of OCaml 4.06, the reference manual at
http://caml.inria.fr/pub/docs/manual-ocaml
will be updated.

As an experiment, a beta release of this new version of the
manual has been uploaded at 
http://www.polychoron.fr/ocaml-beta-manual/4.06 .
(Note that the peculiar colour scheme is only there to mark this version 
as a
beta version.)

This new incarnation of the manual counts no less than two new chapters and
one new section:

  - chapter 5, "Polymorphism and its limitation",
    details potential polymorphism related troubles and their solutions 
or workarounds;
    from weakly polymorphic types (the infamous "'_a" type variables) 
and their link
    with the relaxed value restriction, to polymorphic recursion and 
higher-ranked
    polymorphic function:
    http://www.polychoron.fr/ocaml-beta-manual/4.06/polymorphism.html

  - section 10.6, "The native toplevel: ocamlnat",
    describes the experimental native toplevel and in particular how to 
build it:
http://www.polychoron.fr/ocaml-beta-manual/4.06/toplevel.html#sec296

  - chapter 24, "Compiler plugins",
    covers briefly the basic of ocaml-side plugins with a basic 
hello-world plugin example:
    http://www.polychoron.fr/ocaml-beta-manual/4.06/plugins.html


Moreover, four sections of the language extension chapter have been (mostly)
integrated into the first part of the manual:

   - field punning and functional update for records ("{ r with x = y }" and
   "{ x; y }"):
http://www.polychoron.fr/ocaml-beta-manual/4.06/coreexamples.html#sec11

   - local opens ("let open M in … " and "M.(…)"):
http://www.polychoron.fr/ocaml-beta-manual/4.06/moduleexamples.html#sec18

   - overriding class definitions ("method!" and "val!"):
http://www.polychoron.fr/ocaml-beta-manual/4.06/objectexamples.html#sec32

   - explicit polymorphic type annotations ("f: 'a. 'a -> 'a") are now 
part of
   the new chapter 5, "Polymorphism and its limitation" .

Lastly, the "num" library will no longer be distributed with the compiler.
Consequently, its documentation has been replaced by links to the new "num"
repository and "Zarith" repository.

This release also includes also a lot of smaller bug fixes and 
documentations for new
features described in the full change logs for 4.06 .

All comments on this new iteration of the manual are more than welcome.

Best wishes,
Florian "octachron" Angeletti.