options to write a cross-platform interacting program in OCaml

options to write a cross-platform interacting program in OCaml

[Alan Schmitt]

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Hello,

I am looking at what options there are to rewrite camlgrenouille, a  
small client for www.grenouille.com that I wrote a while ago, to make  
it more modular (to allow an external UI to the core program) and  
cross-platform (Unix and Windows).

In a nutshell, this program periodically runs some tests. Right now  
its interaction with the outside is fairly limited: the only thing one  
can do is ask it to quit (by doing a ctrl-c which is caught so as to  
clean up before actually quitting). I would like to be able to send it  
more complex commands, which would be driven by a UI separate from the  
program.

The simplest approach seems to be using a socket and a select call  
(with a timeout corresponding to the delay until the next test), but I  
was wondering if there were other options based on threads. For  
instance, could I use lwt under Windows?

Thanks for any suggestion,

Alan

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Re: [Caml-list] options to write a cross-platform interacting program in OCaml

[Richard Jones]

On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 05:28:11PM +0100, Alan Schmitt wrote:
> I am looking at what options there are to rewrite camlgrenouille, a  
> small client for www.grenouille.com that I wrote a while ago, to make  
> it more modular (to allow an external UI to the core program) and  
> cross-platform (Unix and Windows).
> 
> In a nutshell, this program periodically runs some tests. Right now  
> its interaction with the outside is fairly limited: the only thing one  
> can do is ask it to quit (by doing a ctrl-c which is caught so as to  
> clean up before actually quitting). I would like to be able to send it  
> more complex commands, which would be driven by a UI separate from the  
> program.
> 
> The simplest approach seems to be using a socket and a select call  
> (with a timeout corresponding to the delay until the next test), but I  
> was wondering if there were other options based on threads. For  
> instance, could I use lwt under Windows?

For such a simple model I'm pretty certain that using select is going
to be the easiest way.

For the cross-platform bit, don't forget to take a look at the Fedora-
MinGW project.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones
Red Hat

Re: [Caml-list] options to write a cross-platform interacting program in OCaml

[Stéphane Glondu]

Alan Schmitt a écrit :
> [...] For instance, could I use lwt under Windows?

FYI, Unison uses lwt and works under Windows.


Cheers,

-- 
Stéphane

Compiling ocaml-ssl under windows (mingw)

[Alan Schmitt]

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On 10 mars 09, at 20:53, Stéphane Glondu wrote:

> Alan Schmitt a écrit :
>> [...] For instance, could I use lwt under Windows?
>
> FYI, Unison uses lwt and works under Windows.

Hello,

I am trying to use lwt under windows (using mingw), and I cannot get  
it to compile, because I cannot compile the required ocaml-ssl. One  
first problem I had was finding a mingw compatible version of openssl  
(as lwt seems to require ocaml-ssl), but I finally found it. Now  
compiling ocaml-ssl fails with the following:

ocamlmklib  -o ssl_stubs  ssl_stubs.o -lcrypto -lssl
make[11]: ocamlmklib: Command not found

I checked, and my godi installation of ocaml does not provide  
ocamlmklib.

Is there a way around this?

Thanks a lot,

Alan

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Re: [Caml-list] Compiling ocaml-ssl under windows (mingw)

[Jerome Vouillon]

Hi Alan,

On Fri, Mar 20, 2009 at 03:38:22PM +0100, Alan Schmitt wrote:
> I am trying to use lwt under windows (using mingw), and I cannot get it 
> to compile, because I cannot compile the required ocaml-ssl.

I believe you can compile Lwt without the ocaml-ssl library by just
removing file src/lwt_ssl.mllib

In file src/lwt_unix.ml, you should also change the line:
  let windows_hack = Sys.os_type <> "Unix"
into
  let windows_hack = false
This was a hack to make Unison work properly under Windows even though
"select" did not support pipes.  As the implementation of "select" has
been improved in Ocaml 3.11, it should no longer be necessary.

-- Jerome

Re: [Caml-list] Compiling ocaml-ssl under windows (mingw)

[Alan Schmitt]

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On 20 mars 09, at 16:25, Jerome Vouillon wrote:

> Hi Alan,
>
> On Fri, Mar 20, 2009 at 03:38:22PM +0100, Alan Schmitt wrote:
>> I am trying to use lwt under windows (using mingw), and I cannot  
>> get it
>> to compile, because I cannot compile the required ocaml-ssl.
>
> I believe you can compile Lwt without the ocaml-ssl library by just
> removing file src/lwt_ssl.mllib

OK. I wanted to install it through godi, but I guess it will be  
simpler to compile it directly. (The ideal would be a configuration  
option to have ssl as optional.)

> In file src/lwt_unix.ml, you should also change the line:
>  let windows_hack = Sys.os_type <> "Unix"
> into
>  let windows_hack = false
> This was a hack to make Unison work properly under Windows even though
> "select" did not support pipes.  As the implementation of "select" has
> been improved in Ocaml 3.11, it should no longer be necessary.

Very interesting, I was not aware of this.

Thanks,

Alan

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