From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 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 pBFAXUEm014305 for ; Thu, 15 Dec 2011 11:33:30 +0100 X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: AloBABTM6U5KfVI0imdsb2JhbAAqGoUKphoIIgEBAQoJDQcSBiGBcgEBAQQSAg8VCAEbDw0BAQMMBgULDQICBRYLAgIJAwIBAgEREQEFARwGDQEHAQEeh2AjmlcKix1IgmuEcECIcQIFC4EkiUKBFgSUdoVNgTSGdD2DeQ X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.71,356,1320620400"; d="scan'208";a="123469075" Received: from mail-ww0-f52.google.com ([74.125.82.52]) by mail4-smtp-sop.national.inria.fr with ESMTP/TLS/RC4-SHA; 15 Dec 2011 11:33:27 +0100 Received: by wgbdr12 with SMTP id dr12so4410080wgb.9 for ; Thu, 15 Dec 2011 02:33:27 -0800 (PST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=message-id:date:from:user-agent:mime-version:to:cc:subject :references:in-reply-to:content-type:content-transfer-encoding; bh=KUmxo4HgIrgp1UbeNHIsPE1hp98FHuOVbgH/uYRy+fM=; b=XL374bFclofLnDms3h1e6zruUmzPEqN0qohk2oARkoNCfwfv+sQmBHF5h0joxxixhf bjUnxVku94V6VC0zXKmVWEzi9luDVuBLH0vt9nOwM6n8JE9mx0FKUd2YyujMS6J/HrVg Wt4yY/3RI/CD7bldE0jyTGFlU0Q5vih3MtP5Y= Received: by 10.216.136.232 with SMTP id w82mr885643wei.46.1323945207066; Thu, 15 Dec 2011 02:33:27 -0800 (PST) Received: from [128.93.11.91] (sauternes.inria.fr. [128.93.11.91]) by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id v10sm7601712wiy.23.2011.12.15.02.33.25 (version=SSLv3 cipher=OTHER); Thu, 15 Dec 2011 02:33:26 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: <4EE9CCF2.3020304@gmail.com> Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2011 11:33:22 +0100 From: Jonathan Protzenko User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:11.0a1) Gecko/20111212 Thunderbird/11.0a1 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Andrej Bauer CC: caml-list@inria.fr References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Don't forget the user 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 . 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 >