Re: [Caml-list] Dynamically evaluating OCaml code

[Gerd Stolpmann <info@gerd-stolpmann.de>]

On Don, 2004-04-08 at 19:15, Brian Hurt wrote:
> > I agree with most of your analogy here.  I'm still relatively new to
> > OCaml, having been using it for only a couple of months, but you've
> > touched on one of my pet peeves: the OCaml standard library is really
> > sub-par for doing real work.  
> 
> Heh.  It's orders of magnitude better than the C or C++ standard
> libraries.  ...
>
> I think the problem here isn't technical, it's social- marketing, to be 
> specific.  Having a language with a very minimialistic standard library 
> isn't the problem- the problem is have a standard development environment 
> with a minimialistic library.  The "core" language and libraries 
> distribution should be, if not hidden, then at least not obvious.  
> Instead, the "default" Ocaml distribution should be something more like 
> CDK (is that project still alive?).  There shouldn't be links from the 
> home page to the core, the home page should link to CDK *only*.  And we 
> need to get the Linux distros up to speed and distributing CDK instead of 
> only Ocaml-core.

As far as I know, CDK isn't alive. Some times ago, I started the GODI
project to fill the gap, see http://www.ocaml-programming.de/godi. There
is already a working GODI distribution. There is already a lot of
infrastructure (mailing list, central repositories). The main error of
CDK was the missing capability of updating libraries; GODI avoids these
problems by using a packaging toolkit.

> While we're kvetching, here's my list of desires to be in the default 
> development environment (note that I don't think any of these belong in 
> the standard libraries):
> 	- OUnit
> 	- ExtLib (OK, this should perhaps become part of the standard)
> 	- BLAS/LAPACK, GMP, and MPI bindings
> 	- Regular expressions
> 	- ocamlexc
> 	- Camllisp (or similiar)
> 	- compression, encryption, etc. filters for I/O

Except regexps and encryption, GODI does not have these libraries yet.
But this is only a problem of packaging them, and uploading them to the
GODI repository. Volunteers are welcome! Ask in the GODI mailing list if
you are interested (https://gps.dynxs.de/mailman/listinfo/godi-list).

> Certain things can be moved out of the standard distribution and moved 
> into the development environment in this case- pcaml, ocamldoc, ocamlex, 
> ocamlyacc, etc.

Not when they are used for the compiler itself.

> Of course, the other advantage that the standard distribution has, in 
> addition to being the default, is coherent documentation.  There is one 
> book, and everything in the standard distribution is more or less equally 
> well documented (ocamllex and ocamlyacc could use some help).  The same 
> thing should be true for the development environment.

GODI does not enforce coherent documentation, but it is still a big step
forward, because all docs are in a single directory.

Gerd
-- 
------------------------------------------------------------
Gerd Stolpmann * Viktoriastr. 45 * 64293 Darmstadt * Germany 
gerd@gerd-stolpmann.de          http://www.gerd-stolpmann.de
------------------------------------------------------------

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