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 pBGDx2lp006086 for ; Fri, 16 Dec 2011 14:59:02 +0100 X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: AksCAJlN606K54gDgWdsb2JhbABEhQyjNoMQIgEBFiYlgXIBAQUjDwFFARALGgIFFgsCAgkDAgECATcBDQYNAQcCrnmRZYEviT+BFgSUdoVOhSGHPg X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.71,363,1320620400"; d="scan'208";a="123658422" Received: from rouge.crans.org ([138.231.136.3]) by mail4-smtp-sop.national.inria.fr with ESMTP/TLS/ADH-AES256-SHA; 16 Dec 2011 14:58:57 +0100 Received: from localhost (localhost.crans.org [127.0.0.1]) by rouge.crans.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6EB8E8077; Fri, 16 Dec 2011 14:58:56 +0100 (CET) X-Virus-Scanned: Debian amavisd-new at crans.org Received: from rouge.crans.org ([10.231.136.3]) by localhost (rouge.crans.org [10.231.136.3]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with LMTP id pvnW82a3ik4i; Fri, 16 Dec 2011 14:58:56 +0100 (CET) Received: from [152.81.3.42] (wencory.loria.fr [152.81.3.42]) (using TLSv1 with cipher AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by rouge.crans.org (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 1640C8072; Fri, 16 Dec 2011 14:58:55 +0100 (CET) Message-ID: <4EEB4E9E.5090404@glondu.net> Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2011 14:58:54 +0100 From: =?UTF-8?B?U3TDqXBoYW5lIEdsb25kdQ==?= User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.2.24) Gecko/20111114 Icedove/3.1.16 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Alain Frisch CC: Gerd Stolpmann , caml-list@inria.fr References: <4EDE33A0.6070004@gmail.com> <1323760512.9833.9.camel@samsung> <4EE711FB.5020602@frisch.fr> <4EE83C26.7090108@frisch.fr> <1323867161.7750.27.camel@samsung> <4EE8DC93.1000806@metaprl.org> <1323884194.7750.58.camel@samsung> <4EEB3BF7.30401@frisch.fr> In-Reply-To: <4EEB3BF7.30401@frisch.fr> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Some comments on recent discussions Le 16/12/2011 13:39, Alain Frisch a écrit : > 3. Binary packages are not created by casual users. It's not crazy to > require, at least in the short term, a decent Unix-like environment > (which includes a C compiler) in order to compile the libraries and > create the binary packages. It would be nice to adapt all the OCaml > libraries around so that they don't rely on external Unix tools, but > this is simply not going to happen. Binary packages could be cross-compiled. This is what has been done for Coq dependencies [1]. Our goal while doing this was just to produce a working Windows version of Coq, but maybe the idea could be extended to provide a full development environment as envisioned in your point 1 (self-contained OCaml toolchain, with no C compiler). The "decent Unix-like" environment you mention would then be an actual existing (foreign) one. Cross-compiling raises the issue of testing of binary packages. But if we can get a working (and reasonably maintainable) OCaml toolchain on Windows, pure OCaml test-suites could be used to test them natively. I don't know about others, but the cross-compiling way would be my best choice: I don't really care about Windows itself, but I do care about Windows users of my software :-) [1] http://ocaml.debian.net/mingw32/ Cheers, -- Stéphane