[Caml-list] Libraries in the distribution

[Caml-list] Libraries in the distribution

[Alain Frisch]

Hello,

there seems to be a consensus that the Str library should be replaced with
Pcre in the standard distribution. I guess that nobody is satisfied with
Str, and that it is kept in the distribution for backward compatibility.

There are currently several levels of "official recognition" for 
libraries:

- standard library: more or less what is needed to build OCaml
- OCaml distribution: useful libraries from the Caml team
- CDK: useful 3rd party libraries
- bazar-ocaml: less general or less finished libraries from the Caml team (?)
- other 3rd party libraries

There is also the Debian effort to package OCaml libraries.

In order to add to the confusion:

- the status of the CDK is not really clear; is it an experiment ? will
there be a way for library authors to upgrade their libraries themselves
in the CDK ? will there be official guidelines for a "standard structure
for packages" ?

- some libraries in the standard distribution seems really integrated
with OCaml (bigarray, dynlink, threads), some are almost unavoidable
(Unix), some have 3rd party (or not) counterpart which are generally
considered superior (Str, labltk ?). 

- for newcomers, it is not necessarily easy to use libraries that
requires custom runtime environement/toplevel  (the good news
is that it seems that there will soon be a support for dynamically
loading library in the runtime environnement).

I don't want to speak for the Caml team, but I'm not sure to see how a 3rd
party library could be included in the standard distribution. The OCaml
distribution follows OCaml releases (of course !), and the author of the
library may want to release more often. Recall that OCaml development does
not follow the bazar model (?); including 3rd party packages is not the
best way to keep control of the development of the language.

I think it is best to keep the OCaml distribution as small as possible,
and to facilitate the installation of other packages. The current CDK
approach seems a bit unrealistic to me: will a few people take in charge
the integration of all 3rd party packages ?  Something like CPAN seems
more promising. (I don't see how it could work without the support
or at least an initial impulsion from the Caml team, but they have
probably more interesting things to do. Maybe if would be in the interest
of the Caml Consortium to coordinate 3rd party efforts; is the
status of the Consortium a public information ?)

Beside a small standard distribution and easy to install packages,
there could be more complete distributions (something like the current
CDK), not necessarily maintained by the Caml team.


Just my .02 EUR.


  Alain Frisch

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Re: [Caml-list] Libraries in the distribution

[Miles Egan]

On Thu, Aug 23, 2001 at 07:37:49PM +0200, Alain Frisch wrote:
> there seems to be a consensus that the Str library should be replaced with
> Pcre in the standard distribution. I guess that nobody is satisfied with
> Str, and that it is kept in the distribution for backward compatibility.

I'd prefer that both str and pcre are included, for backward compatibility.
 
> I don't want to speak for the Caml team, but I'm not sure to see how a 3rd
> party library could be included in the standard distribution. The OCaml
> distribution follows OCaml releases (of course !), and the author of the
> library may want to release more often. Recall that OCaml development does
> not follow the bazar model (?); including 3rd party packages is not the
> best way to keep control of the development of the language.

I agree that third party libraries are problematic, and I think it's wise to
keep their number to a minimum.  In the specific case of pcre, I don't think it
would be too difficult to just include it and update it occasionally as
necessary.  I think Python did this and it didn't cause too much grief.
 
> I think it is best to keep the OCaml distribution as small as possible,
> and to facilitate the installation of other packages.

I agree, but I also think a good regex package is essential and should be
standard.  OCaml seems to be gaining momentum and I think a good, standard regex
package could be a significant boost.  The PLEAC project is a good example of
the importance of such a package.  I'd like to help with the perl -> ocaml
translations, but I think it would be a waste of time to write code using the
str module and I'm also hesitant to use a third party library in "cookbook"
examples.

Speaking just as an OCaml user, I'm much more concerned with the interface of
the package than the implementation.  Perhaps there could be a "re" module, for
example, implemented now with pcre and later in pure OCaml?

-- 
miles

"We in the past evade X, where X is something which we believe to be a
lion, through the act of running." - swiftrain@geocities.com
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Re: [Caml-list] Libraries in the distribution

[Markus Mottl]

On Thu, 23 Aug 2001, Alain Frisch wrote:
> I think it is best to keep the OCaml distribution as small as possible,
> and to facilitate the installation of other packages.

I fully second this. Though I wouldn't mind PCRE being integrated
into the standard distribution, I'd strongly prefer a convenient and
safe packaging system. This is actually the top entry on my wish list,
because I consider this the feature that would most likely make OCaml
attractive to the mainstream.

Today there are _plenty_ of OCaml-libraries floating around for the most
varied purposes. Still, each of them comes with a non-standard way of
installation (if at all...!). This is a _severe_ obstacle to exploiting
the merits of free software development.

> The current CDK approach seems a bit unrealistic to me: will a few
> people take in charge the integration of all 3rd party packages ?
> Something like CPAN seems more promising.

I agree.

> (I don't see how it could work without the support or at least an
> initial impulsion from the Caml team, but they have probably more
> interesting things to do. Maybe if would be in the interest of the
> Caml Consortium to coordinate 3rd party efforts; is the status of the
> Consortium a public information ?)

Development of "social tools" would certainly be very beneficial for
industrial use: fewer hassles for employed programmers, more available
software, potentially more OCaml-programmers that can be hired, etc.
I don't think it would be terribly expensive to let somebody do it. The
Consortium should be very interested in funding such efforts.

Regards,
Markus Mottl

-- 
Markus Mottl                                             markus@oefai.at
Austrian Research Institute
for Artificial Intelligence                  http://www.oefai.at/~markus
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Re: [Caml-list] Libraries in the distribution

[Fabrice Le Fessant]

For the CDK, we are currently looking for a standard way of packaging
libraries in the CDK, so that contributors will be able to easily
submit new libraries and upgrade them in the CDK. For that, we are
waiting for the adoption of a common documentation tool for all ocaml
software (this might happen soon with the ocamldoc system of Maxence
Guesdon), that will provide at least all formats already provided by
cdkdoc (HTML, man, info, ps).

Moreover, contributors can already add and upgrade their library to
the CDK, by downloading either the sources or the CVS version, and
compiling their package inside the sources.

- Fabrice

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Re: [Caml-list] Libraries in the distribution

[Krishnaswami, Neel]

Markus Mottl [mailto:markus@mail4.ai.univie.ac.at] wrote:
> 
> 
> Development of "social tools" would certainly be very beneficial for
> industrial use: fewer hassles for employed programmers, more available
> software, potentially more OCaml-programmers that can be hired, etc.
> I don't think it would be terribly expensive to let somebody 
> do it. The Consortium should be very interested in funding such efforts.

Speaking of social tools, I've noticed that a lot of OCaml packages
all have TeX documentation with a certain common style. Are those
style files available publically anywhere, and if so, could someone
point me to them? I've held off contributing some packages because 
I don't want to write documentation that "looks wrong". 

--
Neel Krishnaswami
neelk@cswcasa.com
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