Re: [Caml-list] Re: Syntax extensions without Camlp4

[Alain Frisch <alain@frisch.fr>]

On 05/27/2012 06:53 PM, Hongbo Zhang wrote:
> Well, I don't think it's good to downplay camlp4. The problem is we need
> more documentation and more tests.

(The new) Camlp4 has been here for several years.  Documentation and 
tests are still lagging behind.  Nevertheless, it burns a non-negligible 
fraction of the total resource spent by maintainers on OCaml (fixing 
bugs, struggling with camlp4 to take new language features into account).

In addition, there is a growing consensus that the most common uses of 
camlp4 (such as code generation driven by type declaration) might be 
based on a much simpler approach, and this would actually have 
advantages for the end-users (like not changing the concrete syntax)
and for developers (much less information to grasp in order to write 
such an extension).

Coq is one of the few examples of a big project that relies on other 
aspects of camlp4 (e.g. its parsing framework with extensible grammars). 
  As far as I know, it also still works with camlp5, which is actively 
maintained, and I don't believe the Coq guys enjoy so much maintaining 
support for both camlp4 and campl5.

All that considered, and this is only a personal opinion: I don't see 
compelling arguments to continue investing efforts in camlp4 itself (at 
least, for the core OCaml team) and I believe it is a good time to start 
considering a (medium-term) future of OCaml without camlp4.  Of course, 
alternative solutions need to be developed and streamlined before 
killing camlp4 is even considered.


Alain