From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from mail4-relais-sop.national.inria.fr (mail4-relais-sop.national.inria.fr [192.134.164.105]) by walapai.inria.fr (8.13.6/8.13.6) with ESMTP id pBGEoGqd008432 for ; Fri, 16 Dec 2011 15:50:16 +0100 X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: Ah0BAEVZ607U4xEJkGdsb2JhbABEhQyjfYJKIgEBAQEJCQ0HFAMigXIBAQUjVhALGAICJgICSQENBicHh2GmfZFjgS+JP4EWBI0QjTSMXw X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.71,363,1320620400"; d="scan'208";a="123666135" Received: from moutng.kundenserver.de ([212.227.17.9]) by mail4-smtp-sop.national.inria.fr with ESMTP; 16 Dec 2011 15:50:11 +0100 Received: from office1.lan.sumadev.de (dslb-094-219-221-006.pools.arcor-ip.net [94.219.221.6]) by mrelayeu.kundenserver.de (node=mreu1) with ESMTP (Nemesis) id 0MIAwM-1RZuPl2GzO-003Job; Fri, 16 Dec 2011 15:50:03 +0100 Received: from [192.168.178.14] (546BF816.cm-12-4d.dynamic.ziggo.nl [84.107.248.22]) by office1.lan.sumadev.de (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 1C0A6C00C7; Fri, 16 Dec 2011 15:50:03 +0100 (CET) From: Gerd Stolpmann To: Alain Frisch Cc: Aleksey Nogin , caml-list@inria.fr In-Reply-To: <4EEB51AB.10200@frisch.fr> References: <4EDE33A0.6070004@gmail.com> <1323760512.9833.9.camel@samsung> <4EE711FB.5020602@frisch.fr> <4EE83C26.7090108@frisch.fr> <1323867161.7750.27.camel@samsung> <4EE8DC93.1000806@metaprl.org> <1323884194.7750.58.camel@samsung> <4EEB3BF7.30401@frisch.fr> <1324041254.7750.99.camel@samsung> <4EEB51AB.10200@frisch.fr> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2011 15:50:01 +0100 Message-ID: <1324047001.7750.115.camel@samsung> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Evolution 2.32.2 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Provags-ID: V02:K0:OJ+AyAszdwVT83gzfyVTV5km4oy0NAA5k64ZnbQW21K 8RmMqLGHupdne0ATazA7ammokbZHMYsyPpUe1TZ7hKpTKKUSrE G41k45YxhUEZ2BxW8gE6mPJaKysxn3CaprAETidYbyuI0+ZJDx og+0Nfaz8ahfccQoBYttbVVHqMZ2qKoCfbvSYYi6ySBBJItqL8 9LxlQxRDGUjm+qV+XlaPgnRCzMPrHrhRR+pTN7LI6l79QZx8pN zQkO02irQLLntlwfrnJOPbkYfz8T4wwGfDU+lqvfkedttYU7MF pE30w/o7mz71+s5RFxE0PNbzHRk6GkH7mwDPH+qJ5riB9aUY3s uyyfaRylTOA89bmQrx5iNFhGfD2AIqDqOv+X8Af8T Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Some comments on recent discussions Am Freitag, den 16.12.2011, 15:11 +0100 schrieb Alain Frisch: > On 12/16/2011 02:14 PM, Gerd Stolpmann wrote: > > Simple answer: There is a bootstrap problem: The existing Ocaml users > > are almost Unix-only. They do not care about Windows. In order to > > establish "Windows-typical problem solving" you need definitely more > > Windows users, but they will only come if you have a Windows-typical way > > of distribution. > > > > My thinking is that you can break this circle only if you go forward and > > try to make as many Unix-style solutions available under Windows as > > possible. > > Honestly, I think this is the wrong approach. The Windows-style of > packaging (i.e. lack of packaging system) is very simple to implement: > just ship zip files or Windows installers. It's less comfortable than > powerful package systems as we're used to in the Unix world, but it is > not an issue for Windows users. > > > By the way, your plan includes Unix emulation, too, under point 3. It's > > only more hidden. > > Yes, but Unix emulation exists and works not too badly. You can use > Cygwin, or msys, etc. I can see two reasons for reimplementing > Unix-like tools, and none of them are good: > > - We want to control everything in order to have better options for > creating nice packages for OCaml related stuff. This is a bad reason, > because Windows users except binary package anyway, so the external > tools needed during the build process don't have to be redistributed. > The only external tools which are currently mandatory to use ocaml > are an assembler and a linker, and some native libraries. Not > a Unix shell, a "find" or a "ls" command. > > - Existing solutions are not build on strong technical foundations, > and one thinks one can do better. Ok, but this has nothing to do > with OCaml; this will necessarily represent a huge amount of > work; and I don't see why people who don't really care about Windows > would do a better job in a few months than people who've spent years > of work on cygwin/msys/etc. > > > Can you explain what's wrong with my approach: > > * OCaml users have access to binary packages which can be trivially > installed (zip files or installers) and are self-contained. I have no problem with that. > * People in charge of creating these packages use existing Unix-like > environment (cygwin/msys/...); and progressively, they > publish "best practices" for the whole community in order to > simplify their job (e.g. try to rely on ocamlbuild or omake instead > of Makefiles; avoid relying on symbolic links; etc). That's the part where I doubt it will happen. How do you find such people? The job description does not sound very attractive, and honestly, if I don't have any (or only limited) interest on my own in this, I'd do this type of work only for money (because it's frustrating, and Windows users are not really known to be grateful for getting something for free). Hence, my idea of reusing as much Unix scripting as possible. It's finally easier. Btw, a lot of infrastructure already exists: GODI for mingw, only that it is broken now, and would need a few days of fixing everything. Because GODI includes a binary package concept, you could easily extract the built libraries, and distribute them in a zip-style format. Currently you need the mingw toolchain for using the compilers, but as you pointed out, this could be improved. You may ask why GODI is broken for mingw. Well, see above. The job is unattractive, too time-consuming, and I lost all interest in it. It's better done by somebody who needs that for his/her own work. Gerd > > > > Alain >