[Caml-list] Changes in CVS

[Caml-list] Changes in CVS

[Jacques Garrigue]

Since I do not now of any other way to inform CVS users, I post
on the main list.
This does not concern users of ocaml 3.02.
Problems will be solved before the next release.

After Xavier's recent changes to introduce dynamic loading of C code,
which already made the distribution rather instable, I just choose
this as the right time to change the behaviour of labels, along the
lines I proposed this spring: remove labels in the standard library,
and switch to (slightly laxist) label mode by default.

Programs that do not use labels will still compile fine, but programs
using them may have problems. In particular libraries using
non-optional labels need to be modified. Snapshots of lablGL and
lablgtk are available.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jacques Garrigue      Kyoto University     garrigue at kurims.kyoto-u.ac.jp
		<A HREF=http://wwwfun.kurims.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~garrigue/>JG</A>
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Re: [Caml-list] Changes in CVS

[Sven]

On Thu, Sep 06, 2001 at 05:53:10PM +0900, Jacques Garrigue wrote:
> Since I do not now of any other way to inform CVS users, I post
> on the main list.
> This does not concern users of ocaml 3.02.
> Problems will be solved before the next release.
> 
> After Xavier's recent changes to introduce dynamic loading of C code,
> which already made the distribution rather instable, I just choose
> this as the right time to change the behaviour of labels, along the
> lines I proposed this spring: remove labels in the standard library,
> and switch to (slightly laxist) label mode by default.
> 
> Programs that do not use labels will still compile fine, but programs
> using them may have problems. In particular libraries using
> non-optional labels need to be modified. Snapshots of lablGL and
> lablgtk are available.

Mmm, this is the second notice of the next release of ocaml i am having today,
which makes me ask myself if there is already a approximative date planed for
it ? As debian/woody is in the process of freezing, it would be nice to have
the latest version of ocaml in the next release, so that we don't have the
current situation, where debian/potato, now almost 1 and a half year after
it's freeze, has only ocaml 2.04.

Friendly,

Sven Luther
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Re: [Caml-list] Changes in CVS

[Xavier Leroy]

> Mmm, this is the second notice of the next release of ocaml i am
> having today, which makes me ask myself if there is already a
> approximative date planed for it ?

The current plan is to make a *beta* release late sept-early october.
Jacques' changes on labels, and my dynamic loading stuff are
sufficiently large changes that we'd like to get some public feedback
about them before making an "official" release.  The date of the next
official release is hard to tell at this point, because it'll depend a
lot on the reactions we get to this beta release.

- Xavier Leroy
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Re: [Caml-list] Changes in CVS

[Markus Mottl]

On Thu, 06 Sep 2001, Xavier Leroy wrote:
> The current plan is to make a *beta* release late sept-early october.
> Jacques' changes on labels, and my dynamic loading stuff are
> sufficiently large changes that we'd like to get some public feedback
> about them before making an "official" release.  The date of the next
> official release is hard to tell at this point, because it'll depend
> a lot on the reactions we get to this beta release.

My wish may not fit well into the current workflow of the OCaml-team,
but anyway, I feel it would save you some work overall:

Would it be possible to get access to a snapshot version of the
documentation, too? To be useful, this would require that you update it
incrementally in accordance with the compiler sources.

I don't mind working with CVS-snapshots (sometimes I have to), but I'd
need more information (= documentation) when trying out new features,
e.g. about the way that dynamic loading is supposed to work, etc. This
might help you in getting faster feedback on the state of your sources
and could significantly cut down the beta-testing time.

Some publically available regression test suite would also be fine if
you want to have people try snapshots on their platforms. Delegating
part of the testing process to the community is likely to save you time
and would thus benefit the community, too.

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] Changes in CVS

[Xavier Leroy]

> Would it be possible to get access to a snapshot version of the
> documentation, too? To be useful, this would require that you update it
> incrementally in accordance with the compiler sources.
> 
> I don't mind working with CVS-snapshots (sometimes I have to), but I'd
> need more information (= documentation) when trying out new
> features,

This is an entirely reasonable request; the problem is that the
documentation rarely gets updated immediately when new features are
added.  I'm probably the worst offender among the OCaml development
team, updating the documentation only a few days before a release :-)

So, I agree the CVS public repository is of little use when the system
undergoes large changes; that's why we try to do a beta release (such
as 2.99) in this case.

Best wishes,

- Xavier Leroy
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Re: [Caml-list] Changes in CVS

[Markus Mottl]

On Mon, 10 Sep 2001, Xavier Leroy wrote:
> This is an entirely reasonable request; the problem is that the
> documentation rarely gets updated immediately when new features are
> added.  I'm probably the worst offender among the OCaml development
> team, updating the documentation only a few days before a release :-)

I had feared that your working style does not differ so much from the one
most people (including me ;) prefer ... who likes writing documentation
anyway?

It is already a start and does not cost too much time if any major changes
are reflected in the Changelog as soon as they are made so that people
at least know what they can expect. When people experiment with changes,
they can always ask here for advice. Luckily, it seems that the Changelog
has been updated more often and accurately during recent development.

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] Changes in CVS

[Nicolas George]

Le jeudi 06 septembre 2001 à 17:53, Jacques Garrigue a écrit :
>				remove labels in the standard library,
> and switch to (slightly laxist) label mode by default.

I am not sure what you mean. Switching to label mode by default is ok for
me. But removing labels in the standard library means breaking all programs
that use them, if I do not miss somethig. Whereas leaving them means
breaking only the makefiles of programs using the old syntax. I think
adding a "-no-labels" in the "OCFLAGS=" line is much less work than fixing
the code, especially if it uses the commuting arguments fetaure.
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Re: [Caml-list] Changes in CVS

[Jacques Garrigue]

From: Nicolas George <nicolas.george@ens.fr>

> Le jeudi 06 septembre 2001 à 17:53, Jacques Garrigue a écrit :
> >				remove labels in the standard library,
> > and switch to (slightly laxist) label mode by default.
> 
> I am not sure what you mean. Switching to label mode by default is ok for
> me. But removing labels in the standard library means breaking all programs
> that use them, if I do not miss somethig. Whereas leaving them means
> breaking only the makefiles of programs using the old syntax. I think
> adding a "-no-labels" in the "OCFLAGS=" line is much less work than fixing
> the code, especially if it uses the commuting arguments fetaure.

Sure, this is incompatible for current label mode users.
A small degree of compatibility is provided by a StdLabels module.
(Only including labels for Array, List and String)
The conversion is relatively easy, particularly if you do not use
commutation of labels too much. Even for heavy users, this should not
be more than about a minute by kloc.

The whole point of this change is to have a unique mode satisfying
everybody, the -nolabels mode being deprecated for normal use.  This
comes at a cost, but gives a better integrated language. If you
remember the discussion on this list this spring, the option you
propose here wouldn't satisfy many users.

Best regards,

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jacques Garrigue      Kyoto University     garrigue at kurims.kyoto-u.ac.jp
		<A HREF=http://wwwfun.kurims.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~garrigue/>JG</A>-------------------
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RE: [Caml-list] Changes in CVS

[Dave Berry]

If you're changing so much anyway, would this be a good opportunity to
also replace the regular expressions in the Str module?

Dave.


-----Original Message-----
From: Jacques Garrigue [mailto:garrigue@kurims.kyoto-u.ac.jp]
Sent: 06 September 2001 09:53

After Xavier's recent changes to introduce dynamic loading of C code,
which already made the distribution rather instable, I just choose
this as the right time to change the behaviour of labels, along the
lines I proposed this spring: remove labels in the standard library,
and switch to (slightly laxist) label mode by default.
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