Solved! ... Re: [Caml-list] Building findlib/OCamlfind on Win32 system

[brian donovan <lists@lophty.com>]

Yutaka OIWA wrote:

>Hello brian,
>
>  
>
>>>On Mon, 10 May 2004 13:59:28 +0800, brian donovan <lists@lophty.com> said:
>>>      
>>>
>
>brian> Hello,
>brian> I posted this query to ocaml_beginners a few days ago and have received 
>brian> no replies as of yet.  Likewise my email to Yutaka Oiwa, the creator of 
>brian> the patch mentioned below.  I haven't approached findlib's author as he 
>brian> stated in the INSTALL file accompanying the findlib package that he does 
>brian> not have access to Windows systems or tools.  I'm reposting here in the 
>brian> hopes that there may be other Win32 OCaml users on Caml-list who've 
>brian> installed findlib ....
>
>I'm sorry I have missed your direct inquery.
>I have just drown in the sea of spams these days...
>  
>
I sympathize completely.  Although the junk mail controls in Mozilla 
Mail are great, I still have to wade through the suspected spam 
periodically to look for false positives and it's something that I admit 
that I don't get around to nearly as often as I should.

>brian> I'm an OCaml newbie (actually, I'm new to functional languages 
>brian> altogether and, for all intents and purposes, to compiled languages as 
>brian> well).  I've installed the standalone MinGW port of OCaml 3.0.7 on a 
>brian> WinXP system for learning purposes.
>
>...
>
>brian> with MinGW port of OCaml.  I downloaded findlib 0.8.1 and the patch 
>brian> (from here : 
>brian> <http://www.ocaml-programming.de/packages/index-alt.html>).  I extracted 
>brian> the tarball, pasted the patch file into the top findlib directory and 
>brian> applied the patch (I've got the Cygwin toolchain installed).  Patch 
>brian> complained about an error when I applied it initially and suggested that 
>...
>
>brian> The rest of the build went fine : ./configure, make all, make opt, make 
>brian> install, and make clean (as recommended in the INSTALL file bundled with 
>brian> findlib).  I tried using findlib.  Nothing seemed to work except the 
>brian> command findlib ocamlbrowser, which launched a little 4 pane gui that 
>brian> listed most (but not all?) of the modules/libraries in the lib directory 
>brian> of my OCaml install (stublibs, labltk, findlib itself, forex were not 
>brian> visible - shouldn't they be?).  Trying other commands, like "ocamlfind 
>brian> query Unix" or "ocamlfind query Array" or "ocamlfind list" gave me nada 
>brian> - just a fresh prompt.
>
>One possibility is simply that the findlib 0.8.1 does not work properly
>with OCaml 3.0.7. This is due to the changed (maybe undocumented)
>semantics of the Arg module from OCaml core library.
>This problem is already fixed in the newer versions of the original findlib.
>  
>
Although I am far out of my depth, I think that you may be correct.

>I had written an ad-hoc patch to findlib 0.8.1 before new official
>findlib was released. That is obsoleted but left as-is at
>http://www.yl.is.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~oiwa/pub/caml/frontend.ml.ocaml307.patch .
>This patch was written with CVS versions of OCaml between 3.0.6 and 3.0.7,
>so it may work or may not work with current 3.0.7, but you can try anyway.
>Possibly the better way is to backport the corresponding portion of
>code from current findlib, or to port my patch into newer findlib.
>
>Unfortunately, I am currently not using OCaml/mingw deeply,
>so the patch mentioned above is not maintained heavily.
>If you succeed to fix the problem, please tell me.
>  
>
Thank you for sharing this patch.  I tried applying it directly, but 
received some error messages.  When I applied it after first applying 
the patched linked from the ocaml-programming.de site, it went fine.  I 
was able to build findlib 0.8.1 w/no error msgs.  Unfortunately, findlib 
was functioning as before (only the browser worked and only partly, 
other commands did nothing, etc.).  This leads me to suspect that OCaml 
3.0.7 + findlib 0.8.1 just don't work together.

With the patch from Eugene Kotlyarov and following his advice, I was 
able to get the most recent version of findlib working with OCaml 
3.0.7.  That's solved my problems for now, but I urge you to share the 
frontend.ml.ocaml307.patch with Gerd Stolpmann (email 
<gerd(at)gerd-stolpmann.de>).  Undoubtedly, there will be someone at 
some point who's trying to get OCaml 3.0.6 working with findlib 0.8.1 
and your work may be a lifeline for them.  If I hadn't seen on Gerd's 
site that someone (you) had gotten a version of findlib working on 
Win32, I might not have pursued the matter as far as I did and may never 
have gotten this sorted out.

Thanks again

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