Re: [Caml-list] Don't forget the user

[Jonathan Protzenko <jonathan.protzenko@gmail.com>]

Hi Andrej,

I would gladly welcome any patch for my ocaml-installer that allows one 
to build the self-contained environment you describe. Some people seem 
to have volunteered to help out; let them be assured that I will gladly 
review any patch they send.

I'm just afraid it's a big task to do so, which is why I haven't 
tackled this earlier (I could easily see myself spending the whole week 
on it).

There's also http://caml.inria.fr/mantis/view.php?id=0005392 that could 
be improved with the ocaml installer. Any patches for that are welcome, 
too.

Just for reference, the project lives on github 
<https://github.com/protz/ocaml-installer>.

Cheers,

jonathan

On Thu 15 Dec 2011 08:29:53 AM CET, Andrej Bauer wrote:
> Recent discussions on how to improve the Ocaml-on-windows situation
> are very welcome, but I see a lot of tech-speak and little feeling for
> the users, who care just about one thing: to have a click&  install
> distribution of Ocaml that actually works.
>
> Keep this in mind: 90% of potential Ocaml users are on Windows, and
> they never heard of Mingw or Cygwin, and they never used a command
> prompt.
>
> It doesn't matter if the distribution is incomplete. It doesn't matter
> what is under the hood. It doesn't matter what "the expert" thinks
> about it, much less so what Linux people think about it (I am typing
> this on a Linux box). Someone just needs to do it, and Jonathan
> Protzenko seems an obvious candidate. Jonathan, if you have the time
> to modify your distribution so that it become self-contained, i.e., it
> contains mingw + ocaml (does _not_ separately install mingw, it just
> sticks it under ocaml and then ocaml uses that, independently of
> whether there already is a mingw on the system), I am sure that will
> be received very positively by many people, even though "the experts"
> will spit on it, and will point out that this is not The Right Way,
> etc. Just do it.
>
> Once we have such a thing, it can be optimized to our hearts content:
> strip down mingw, check if mingw is already there, add support for
> flexdll, etc.
>
> The said fact is that I would _love_ to teach Ocaml to my students,
> but I can't because installing Ocaml is too hard. Just give me
> _anything_ that actually works. Otherwise I will keep teaching
> "functional programming" with Mathematica...
>
> That's my opinion.
>
> With kind regards,
>
> Andrej
>