Re: [Caml-list] OCaml & XP, OCaml & CDK

[Xavier Leroy <xavier.leroy@inria.fr>]

Hi Nikolaj,

> It was not clear to me which e-mail is the most appropriate for
> the notes below, so I decided to let everyone share the joy.

Thanks for sharing your experience, I'm sure some readers of this list
will find it useful.

> Installing OCaml on Windows and Setting environment [variables]

I hope this mess will be fixed by the next release.  The installer we
use is unable to position environment variables automatically (like it
should).  I'm working on a registry-based hack to work around this.

> camlopt
> -------
> The link to the assembler from the README was out-dated (a number
> of other links are broken from the ocaml sites).
> Instead Google got me to masm32: http://www.movsd.com/masm.htm
> A small 5.9 MB download, followed by install and the above PATH
> exercise.

I wasn't aware of this reimplementation of Microsoft's MASM.  Good to
know.  Microsoft itself is distributing MASM freely now, but well
hidden in various huge downloads...

> ocamlmklib
> ----------
> Is this missing under windows?
> My Linux installation has it, my XP does not.

In 3.04, ocamlmklib is available only for Unix, because that's where
it was most needed (to hide differences in shared lib building across
Unix platforms).  I agree a Windows version would be nice, to help
writing portable Unix/Windows makefiles.

> The hump
> --------
> caml.inria.fr seems down quite often, for example April 6'th.

Our upstream provider experienced major network problems at the
beginning of this month, culminating with a full-day outage on April
9th.  Sorry about that.

> Libraries 
> ---------
> Several more features from the Hump 
> can be added to CDK, such that for example cryptokit 
> uses zlib from CDK and does not define it on its own.

Yes, cryptokit could have used either zlib or camlzip to implement
compression, but I'm wary of cross-library dependencies and wanted
cryptokit to be usable on its own (with a stock OCaml installation).

> Libraries that appear to be missing:
> 
> - XML SOAP 
> - OpenSSL, OpenSSH interface or should we just re-implement ASN1 parsers,
>   Spki interface, RSA crypto, SSL 2.0, 3.0, and TLS?

Sounds like fun :-)  I agree it's more reasonable to bind to OpenSSL.
François Rouaix tried that a long time ago, before OpenSSL was called
OpenSSL, and at that time the documentation of that library was too
incomplete.  Things are probably better these days.

> - SMTP
> - Mime tools
> - XML SAX

> Are there any organized more extensive wish-lists for the CDK?

I was wondering whether the HumpS should not include a "project
proposals" section, just to give ideas to Caml developers that have
too much free time on their hands :-)

- Xavier Leroy
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