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

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

On Fri 16 Dec 2011 01:39:19 PM CET, Alain Frisch wrote:
>
> A few points:
>
> 1. It would be useful to have a completely standalone binary 
> distribution of ocaml (with ocamlopt) under Windows. This can be 
> achieved either with little development efforts by extracting the 
> minimal needed subset of an mingw toolchain (an assembler, a linker, 
> some libraries and object files to link the main program); or with a 
> little bit more effort, by avoiding the need for an external toolchain 
> altogether. I insist: most users of OCaml under Windows won't need a C 
> compiler or Unix-like tools.
I'm considering doing that with the next version of my ocaml installer, 
because this has been raised quite a few times on this list already.
>
> 2. Binary packages for OCaml libraries could be simple .zip files to 
> be extracted at a precise place (under the hierarchy created by the 
> OCaml binary installer itself); or maybe even Windows installers. If 
> installing a library only amounts to clicking on a link in a web page 
> and run the installer, it already makes the life of the casual user 
> much easier. We don't necessarily need a full-blown packaging system, 
> with dependency tracking, versioning, automatic download, etc.
Sure. I've discussed including findlib in the installer for windows [1] 
so that people can easily install third-party libraries and have them 
recognized.

Cheers,

jonathan

[1] https://github.com/protz/ocaml-installer/issues/4
>
>
> -- Alain
>