RE: [Caml-list] The DLL-hell of O'Caml

RE: [Caml-list] The DLL-hell of O'Caml

[Dave Berry]

FWIW, we (KAL) maintain backwards compatibility in a whole host of DLLs
and OCXs on Windows NT, 2000, and XP.  You can drop a version of our
utilities DLL compiled last night into a distribution from two years
ago, and your distribution will carry on working as if nothing had
changed.  So it is possible, even on Microsoft systems, given sufficient
care on the part of the designers.

What would be nice would be a type system that could ensure this for us.
There's some opportunities for academic research here, surely?

-----Original Message-----
From: Xavier Leroy [mailto:xavier.leroy@inria.fr]
Sent: 21 March 2002 18:10
To: Jeff Henrikson
Cc: caml-list@inria.fr
Subject: Re: [Caml-list] The DLL-hell of O'Caml

What I think is futile is to expect users to pick independently-
compiled binary distributions of libraries and dynamically-linked
executables
left and right, and expect that the resulting system will work.  Try
to do this with a Linux system and it will break very quickly.

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Sample code (was Re: [Caml-list] The DLL-hell of O'Caml)

[Tim Freeman]

From: "Dave Berry" <Dave@kal.com>
>You can drop a version of our
>utilities DLL compiled last night into a distribution from two years
>ago, and your distribution will carry on working as if nothing had
>changed.  So it is possible, even on Microsoft systems, given sufficient
>care on the part of the designers.
>
>What would be nice would be a type system that could ensure this for us.
>There's some opportunities for academic research here, surely?

I proposed a scheme for ensuring type-safety in this situation on this
mailing list yesterday morning, along with a concrete example.  No
replies yet.  The message is in the archives at:

   http://caml.inria.fr/archives/200203/msg00158.html

If you don't want to unpack the sample code from the email, you may
download it from

   http://www.fungible.com/dll-example.tar.gz

This file is only 1418 bytes.
-- 
Tim Freeman       
tim@fungible.com
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