Re: [Caml-list] Some comments on recent discussions

[Alain Frisch <alain@frisch.fr>]

On 12/13/2011 09:21 AM, Martin DeMello wrote:
> it's a bit frustrating for me because i don't have or
> use windows either, but if i develop an end user app i really want it
> to be as cross-platform as possible.

This attitude partially explains why support for OCaml under Windows 
lacks behind: people want it to work, because they somehow have to 
produce applications running under Windows, but they really don't like 
this OS and certainly don't want to invest time in learning its gory 
details in order to improve the situation with OCaml.  I don't blame 
anyone here, and I'd probably avoid developing under Windows myself if 
this was not mandatory for our business.  From what I hear, this is also 
the case for other industrial users of OCaml who needs Windows support. 
(And also for large projects like Coq, etc.)

There are a few talented OCaml enthusiasts who know quite a lot about 
Windows and have put some energy in improving OCaml for this OS in the 
past.  Thanks to them!

As Xavier said, it would be great to find someone who'd like to join the 
core dev team in order to improve support for Windows. Anyone interested?

But in order to get really good support in the long term, which includes
community tools (packaging, porting libraries, support for Windows API 
and .Net, documentation, etc), I think we need to find a way to 
"bootstrap" a larger community of OCaml hobbyists, who consider Windows 
as their main platform.  (It might be the case that "native Windows 
users" are culturally less inclined to participate to an open source 
project, but I don't believe this is the primary explanation for the 
lack of community work for Windows. We simply need more people on board.)

Good support for OCaml under Windows would benefits not only to Windows 
users, as it might simply attract a lot more people to OCaml and it 
would probably make the life easier to those who are "forced" to produce 
Windows applications.  So this questions should be of interest to the 
community as a whole.

Do you guys have ideas on how to bootstrap a larger community of 
OCaml/Windows hobbyists?


Alain