Re: [Caml-list] About contributions to the Standard Library

[Goswin von Brederlow <goswin-v-b@web.de>]

On Mon, Jun 27, 2016 at 01:19:10PM +0200, Gerd Stolpmann wrote:
> Am Montag, den 27.06.2016, 11:09 +0200 schrieb Goswin von Brederlow:
> > Why should we contribute when contibutions are just left to bitrot?
> > 
> > Like: http://caml.inria.fr/mantis/view.php?id=4909 which has had a
> > patch for 6 1/2 year that's just left rotting.
> 
> I guess you hit one of the pain points of the current library design,
> namely the various integer types (and the issue of combinatorial
> increase of possible variants). In my most recent code (a data science
> lib) I solved that radically - no support for 32 bit architectures
> anymore. The truth is that with current OCaml you cannot support both 32
> bit and 64 bit equally well. Either you get a performance loss from
> boxed ints, or you get macros in central places of your code.
> 
> Of course, that's no excuse for not responding at all.
> 
> Gerd

But that patch addresses exactly that problem by introducing a new
Bigarray type that is fast (uses int, not a boxed type) and also uses
the same size on 32bit and 64bit. There are many cases where 31bit
integers are sufficient but in ocaml one can not use them consistently
on 32bit and 64bit.

MfG
	Goswin