From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Sympa-To: caml-list@inria.fr Received: from mail4-relais-sop.national.inria.fr (mail4-relais-sop.national.inria.fr [192.134.164.105]) by walapai.inria.fr (8.13.6/8.13.6) with ESMTP id pB6ApC1w026266 for ; Tue, 6 Dec 2011 11:51:12 +0100 X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: ApoBAAPz3U7RVdg2kGdsb2JhbABEhQWVJ5AnCCIBAQEBCQkNBxQEIYFyAQEBAwESAg8dAS0KAgMMAQUFGAkEEggDAgIJAwIBAgEiAQUBCgEREwYCAQEOAgYIh2UCBpdkCoscgzOFIokuAgUKg2iGKoEWBI4QgRWFQYVKgTSGbj2BS4It X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.71,304,1320620400"; d="vcf'?scan'208";a="122211281" Received: from mail-qw0-f54.google.com ([209.85.216.54]) by mail4-smtp-sop.national.inria.fr with ESMTP/TLS/RC4-SHA; 06 Dec 2011 11:51:06 +0100 Received: by qabg14 with SMTP id g14so1096252qab.6 for ; Tue, 06 Dec 2011 02:51:05 -0800 (PST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=sender:message-id:date:from:user-agent:mime-version:to:subject :references:in-reply-to:x-enigmail-version:content-type; bh=FHNqZp422HcaD3ZkBM6Txh9u1FxfhbDhVMXfetdsMLM=; b=KAEj6Cwb/TpV4fQJFJ1WYK9rfnrLznE2StV1ckr8FZHk9ykztl0Jd3SaCgWv12c5ej iDw0tCOlHMNPKe+p7uSQhvRb8IQbNSCqtjLGUFL9RfM6+krtZpkkGMiGROWyVh7GOH1L 9KSvJ01EJaIH9VP+w6v4T1bK73ez+AO9dNSpc= Received: by 10.224.210.130 with SMTP id gk2mr11513082qab.23.1323168665376; Tue, 06 Dec 2011 02:51:05 -0800 (PST) Received: from [193.55.250.228] (chercheurs2-228.saclay.inria.fr. [193.55.250.228]) by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id r10sm31561376qaz.7.2011.12.06.02.51.02 (version=SSLv3 cipher=OTHER); Tue, 06 Dec 2011 02:51:03 -0800 (PST) Sender: Fabrice Le Fessant Message-ID: <4EDDF394.7010401@inria.fr> Date: Tue, 06 Dec 2011 11:51:00 +0100 From: Fabrice Le Fessant User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.2.23) Gecko/20110922 Lightning/1.0b2 Thunderbird/3.1.15 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: caml-list@inria.fr References: <1B0D83BD-1902-4F7C-B3FB-B759122D6AB9@googlemail.com> In-Reply-To: X-Enigmail-Version: 1.1.2 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------010808060302030905040308" X-Validation-by: fabrice.le_fessant@inria.fr Subject: Re: [Caml-list] OCaml maintenance status / community fork This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------010808060302030905040308 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 12/06/2011 10:42 AM, Kakadu wrote: > Does anybody have news about OCamlPro? Yes, OCamlPro is working on different projects to improve OCaml (namespaces, better inlining, debugging, multicore gc, etc.), but the main focus is currently on improving development tools (edition, refactoring, navigation, documentation, etc.), while minimizing the modifications on the compiler itself. The plan is to release a first version by the beginning of 2012, but it will be complementary to OCaml, not a replacement. For the OCaml distribution itself, OCamlPro will have a different release cycle for its own version, targetting industrial users, but the high quality testing process required to do that is still under construction. Fabrice > ----------------------------------------------------------- > Kakadu > > On Tue, Dec 6, 2011 at 12:25 PM, Benedikt Meurer > > > wrote: > > Dear caml-list, > > During the last year or two it seems that time and interest in OCaml > maintenance from the official OCaml development team is diminishing. > It takes several months to get a patch reviewed (if at all), which > is quite frustrating for OCaml contributors and even worse for OCaml > users. I suspect that this is one of the top reasons why there are > only a few active contributors to OCaml (and the number of active > users, at least on the mailing list, is declining). > > I understand that INRIA does not necessarily pay people for full > time maintenance jobs on OCaml (and Coq), and the official dev team > is probably already doing as much as possible to maintain OCaml. > Given that OCaml is such a nice language with a lot of useful > frameworks available, it is too sad to see it loosing ground just > because of it's closed development process and lack of time of the > official team. > > I'd therefore propose to open up OCaml development to a wider range > of developers / contributors, to ensure that OCaml will be ready for > the (functional programming) future. There are already various > "OCaml forks" in the wild, with different goals and patch sets, so > simply starting another fork would be rather useless. Instead I'd > suggest to bundle efforts in a new "OCaml community fork", which is > always based on the most recent upstream OCaml release (starting > point would be 3.12.1 for now), and takes care to review and > integrate pending patches as well as developing and testing new > features. Let's say we'd name the fork "OCaml-ng", then we'd try to > release a new patch set every month or two, based on the official > OCaml release, i.e. "ocaml-3.12.1+ng201112" and so on, to get early > testing and feedback (should work together closely with the > Debian/Ubuntu/etc. OCaml maintainers). > > With this process, OCaml upstream could merge (tested) patches from > OCaml-ng once they proved working in the wild, and thereby > > 1. maintenance overhead for INRIA people is reduced, > 2. maintenance status of OCaml would be way better, > 3. there would be a lot less frustration for possible contributors, and > 4. users benefit from a better and more up to date OCaml. > > Now that does of course raise a few questions: > > 1. What is the opinion of the official development team / INRIA on this? > 2. Who would help with the community fork? > 3. What about infrastructure? > > Feedback and suggestions are welcome. > > Benedikt > > -- > Caml-list mailing list. Subscription management and archives: > https://sympa-roc.inria.fr/wws/info/caml-list > Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners > Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs > > --------------010808060302030905040308 Content-Type: text/x-vcard; charset=utf-8; name="fabrice_le_fessant.vcf" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="fabrice_le_fessant.vcf" begin:vcard fn:Fabrice LE FESSANT n:LE FESSANT;Fabrice org:INRIA Saclay -- Ile-de-France;P2P & OCaml adr;quoted-printable:;;Parc Orsay Universit=C3=A9 ;Orsay CEDEX;;91893;France email;internet:fabrice.le_fessant@inria.fr title;quoted-printable:Charg=C3=A9 de Recherche tel;work:+33 1 74 85 42 14 tel;fax:+33 1 74 85 42 49 url:http://fabrice.lefessant.net/ version:2.1 end:vcard --------------010808060302030905040308--