From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id AAA16712; Sat, 24 Apr 2004 00:08:18 +0200 (MET DST) X-Authentication-Warning: pauillac.inria.fr: majordomo set sender to owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr using -f Received: from concorde.inria.fr (concorde.inria.fr [192.93.2.39]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id AAA16603 for ; Sat, 24 Apr 2004 00:08:17 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from mallaury.noc.nerim.net (smtp-105-friday.noc.nerim.net [62.4.17.105]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.12.10/8.12.10) with ESMTP id i3NM8GYM019961 for ; Sat, 24 Apr 2004 00:08:16 +0200 Received: from hector.lesours (ours.starynkevitch.net [213.41.130.15]) by mallaury.noc.nerim.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3D35962D37; Sat, 24 Apr 2004 00:08:13 +0200 (CEST) Received: from basile by hector.lesours with local (Exim 4.32) id 1BH8qF-0000iB-8z; Sat, 24 Apr 2004 00:08:15 +0200 Date: Sat, 24 Apr 2004 00:08:15 +0200 To: John Goerzen , caml-list@inria.fr Subject: Re: [Caml-list] [ANN] The Missing Library Message-ID: <20040423220815.GA1983@ours.starynkevitch.net> References: <20040423185148.GA4434@excelhustler.com> <20040423195206.GA27257@tallman.kefka.frap.net> <20040423202342.GA5962@excelhustler.com> <20040423223611.33ef1c08@haddock.max.fr> <20040423211003.GD6783@excelhustler.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit In-Reply-To: <20040423211003.GD6783@excelhustler.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.5.1+cvs20040105i From: Basile STARYNKEVITCH X-Miltered: at concorde by Joe's j-chkmail ("http://j-chkmail.ensmp.fr")! X-Loop: caml-list@inria.fr X-Spam: no; 0.00; caml-list:01 basile:01 basile:01 2004:99 2004:99 maxence:01 guesdon:01 featureful:01 maxence:01 freshmeat:01 sourceforge:01 extlib:01 extlib:01 dormant:99 python:01 Sender: owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr Precedence: bulk On Fri, Apr 23, 2004 at 04:10:03PM -0500, John Goerzen wrote: > On Fri, Apr 23, 2004 at 10:36:11PM +0200, Maxence Guesdon wrote: > > Dans son style inimitable, John Goerzen écrivait: > > > > > But the fact that these libraries exist is, at its heart, a symptom of > > > the problems with the OCaml standard library. I disagree with the above sentence. > > I'm getting bored of this song. What about this one : > > "The number of extlibs is a symptom of the problems with the > > community of OCaml users" ? > You view it as a problem that some in the OCaml community would like to > see a more featureful and easy to use standard library? Why? I agree with Maxence. Even if I currently work (on a temporary position ending on 15th september 2004) at INRIA in Cristal, I will give my personal opinion here, which probably is not exactly that of the OCaml project (ie Cristal) at INRIA. I think that the standard library is actually rather perhaps too big, than too small! People should really use external libraries, and it is not the job of INRIA to develop all of them. It is the job of the community to make and enhance additional libraries. The community works quite well, given the big amount of good libraries (advertised in the hump or otherwise, e.g. freshmeat or sourceforge). And more and more external contributions appear every week! It is a pity that 2 libraries named ExtLib exist, and it is certainly not the fault of OCaml team (I tend to believe that one of the ExtLib named library is nearly dormant, and I invite the author of this library to rename it). The goal of INRIA (as defined by official documents) is to make useful reasearch in computer science (If you are interested by the documents, you can read them in French on INRIA's web site). As a French taxpayer (and there are not enough taxes spent in France on reasearch - there is globally under-funding of research in the whole European Union, especially when compared to the US or to Japan), I don't think that it is the goal of INRIA to code lots of external libraries, or even to manage the naming of many packages, which is a very labor-consuming social task not really related to research. And more importantly, these tasks are not defined to be done at INRIA by its official policy. INRIA is not a big commercial company like Sun. So the goals of INRIA w.r.t. Ocaml are not similar to the goals of Sun w.r.t. Java. And the means (e.g. funding) devoted to Ocaml is much smaller than those devoted to Java (or probably Python or Perl). Again, the raison d'être of INRIA is research, not [mainly] development of software libraries. And INRIA's performance is not measured (for the french government, ie for the entity giving the money to INRIA) in number of lines of OCaml source code in libraries! Again, all these official documents are public (sometimes in French), including (IIRC) the evaluation of INRIA's work. Everyone can contribute to Ocaml by developping libraries, and advertising them (e.g. thru the Hump). If there is a name clash, it should be socially resolved, and it is not a research goal to solve it (this is why it is not INRIA's job to solve such conflicts, and solving such "managing" or "social" problems is extremely time consuming, hence very costly). In my opinion, the standard library should be kept small, and should contain only the functions commonly needed to the compiler and to all the Ocaml software produced by INRIA in relation to the OCaml language (e.g. compilers and similar tools). The standard library should certainly not becomes the union of all useful OCaml modules (from the Hump - which is more a Bazar, while the core Ocaml software, including the standard library, is a Cathedral). For example, when (2 years ago) I worked on Poesia (at CEA in that time), I had to code an interface to uname, and I just coded it, without asking anybody. People should not expect every OCaml problem to be solved at INRIA. It is not reasonable (and not the mission of INRIA anyway!), but people should continue to contribute to OCaml thru useful libraries, and should use and enhance these external contributions. Regarding standard libraries, they should be kept small, because they have to be learnt with the language. I believe that one of Common Lisp problems (and perhaps source of failure) is the huge size of its standard library, which is intimidating. Again, everything above is my own opinion, not those of INRIA (where I happen to work currently) - I am not paid to talk for INRIA! But I think that there is too much criticism w.r.t. to the work on Ocaml done at INRIA. "C'est la rançon du succès" (I leave this last sentence in French). -- Basile STARYNKEVITCH http://starynkevitch.net/Basile/ email: basilestarynkevitchnet aliases: basiletunesorg = bstarynknerimnet 8, rue de la Faïencerie, 92340 Bourg La Reine, France ------------------- To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr Archives: http://caml.inria.fr Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs FAQ: http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/ Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners