From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Delivered-To: caml-list@yquem.inria.fr Received: from nez-perce.inria.fr (nez-perce.inria.fr [192.93.2.78]) by yquem.inria.fr (Postfix) with ESMTP id DF71ABC8B for ; Thu, 3 Feb 2005 21:51:01 +0100 (CET) Received: from pauillac.inria.fr (pauillac.inria.fr [128.93.11.35]) by nez-perce.inria.fr (8.13.0/8.13.0) with ESMTP id j13Kp1sw032142 for ; Thu, 3 Feb 2005 21:51:01 +0100 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 VAA23324 for ; Thu, 3 Feb 2005 21:51:00 +0100 (MET) Received: from mta10-winn.mailhost.ntl.com (smtpout18.mailhost.ntl.com [212.250.162.18]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.13.0/8.13.0) with ESMTP id j13Kp0FI000954 for ; Thu, 3 Feb 2005 21:51:00 +0100 Received: from aamta01-winn.mailhost.ntl.com ([212.250.162.8]) by mta10-winn.mailhost.ntl.com with ESMTP id <20050203205100.OICC20856.mta10-winn.mailhost.ntl.com@aamta01-winn.mailhost.ntl.com>; Thu, 3 Feb 2005 20:51:00 +0000 Received: from [80.4.70.84] by aamta01-winn.mailhost.ntl.com with ESMTP id <20050203205100.KNFN15415.aamta01-winn.mailhost.ntl.com@[80.4.70.84]>; Thu, 3 Feb 2005 20:51:00 +0000 Message-ID: <42028EB1.7060602@ntlworld.com> Date: Thu, 03 Feb 2005 20:50:57 +0000 From: "chris.danx" User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0 (X11/20041206) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: skaller@users.sourceforge.net Cc: Thomas Fischbacher , Erik de Castro Lopo , caml-list Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Estimating the size of the ocaml community References: <891bd33905020213315a2ebb18@mail.gmail.com> <8008871f05020213362d21ba87@mail.gmail.com> <000f01c50971$baad4840$0100a8c0@mshome.net> <1107403128.32586.223.camel@pelican.wigram> <20050203173556.4acec1c5.ocaml-erikd@mega-nerd.com> <1107461173.14589.91.camel@pelican.wigram> In-Reply-To: <1107461173.14589.91.camel@pelican.wigram> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Miltered: at nez-perce with ID 42028EB5.000 by Joe's j-chkmail (http://j-chkmail.ensmp.fr)! X-Miltered: at concorde with ID 42028EB4.000 by Joe's j-chkmail (http://j-chkmail.ensmp.fr)! X-Spam: no; 0.00; caml-list:01 ocaml:01 wrote:01 wrote:01 ocaml:01 interfacing:01 trivial:01 compiler:01 compiler:01 interfacing:01 trivial:01 ntlworld:98 lisp:01 flx:01 underlying:01 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.2 (2004-11-16) on yquem.inria.fr X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.0 required=5.0 tests=none autolearn=disabled version=3.0.2 X-Spam-Level: skaller wrote: > On Fri, 2005-02-04 at 05:06, Thomas Fischbacher wrote: > > >>Anyway, this leaves us with a very interesting question: how many people >>actually do believe in the value of Ocaml? I, for myself, use it whenever >>it is the most appropriate tool for a job (usually, when portability is >>an issue). This is sometimes the case, but more often than not, LISP >>turned out to be a better choice for what I do. > > > Well .. > > [skaller@pelican] ~/links/flx/src>wc *.ml > 89737 342248 3223570 total > > 90K Camls here speak for themselves .. > > Ocaml has four downsides from my viewpoint: > > (a) interfacing to C isn't trivial > (b) native code compiler on x86 can't make a shared library > > To a large extent these two factors are not only > the reason for those 90K lines (which implement a > compiler) but also the reason I'll probably have to > bootstrap the compiler away from Ocaml. I didn't realise the native code compiler on x86 couldn't do this. What exactly is the problem? For interfacing to C would it be helpful to create a tool for handling all the underlying stuff. In Ada, binding to C is done through special compiler directives and it's pretty trivial to do. OCaml isn't Ada or as close to C as Ada is, but I was thinking of something that allows descriptions in OCaml augmented with directives telling the tool how to handle C. Running the tool over a script would generate the appropriate C code for interfacing with OCaml. I'm not 100% sure of the details or the benefit, but it might be worth considering. Regards, Chris