[Caml-list] Re: Call for collaboration on the future of camlp4

[bobzhang <bobzhang1988@gmail.com>]

Dear all,
For those who are concerned:
   The latest version of building camlp4 is under 8s.
real	0m7.653s
user	0m5.595s
sys	0m1.736s
On 9/18/12 3:11 PM, bob zhang wrote:
> Dear OCaml programmers,
>     Last week, I give a talk about the future of Camlp4 in the ML
> workshop, the slides are here
> http://www.lexifi.com/ml2012/slides_panel_hongbo.pdf (some are already
> done, some are work in progress).
>     For a long time, in the caml community, thanks to the talented work
> of Daniel and Michel,  we know there is a very very powerful tool called
> *camlp4*, if there are some bolierpolate code you write here and there,
> someone will tell you "hey, you can do it in camlp4" though he may not
> know how to do it in camlp4.
>     But it's a bit embarassing that camlp4 did not evolve very
> well(partly due to the fragmentation of camlp[4,5]), another fact is
> that camlp4 is not *designed*, it's like a prototype that works but not
> carefully designed, and it does not provide anything out of the box  and
> itself was written in a verbose way.
>     It's time to bring the powerful tool back, my advisor Steve and I
> started a new project Fan, which is mainly to evolve the camlp4 macro
> system to be more expressive and more powerful, push the Camlp4 to the
> next level. For me, I am a long-term Lisp programmer, I appreciated the
> value of macros, I would really be happy to see we could make a such
> powerful macro systems.
>     Here is my repo https://bitbucket.org/HongboZhang/camlp4
>     I already finished some cool staff,  to mention just a few:
>     1. A very robust bootstrapping system, previously it takes me 20
> minutes to ver/ify my patches to camlp4 can reach a fixpoint or not, but
> now you can compile your modification within seconds, and reach a
> fixpoint under 2 minutes, this accelerate the development cycles
> immediately./
> /   2. Now you can customize your lexer now, previously it's impossible(
> and a number of bug fixes) you can do deep anti-quotation like /
> /  <:expr< <:expr< $($(deepantiquot)) >> >> /
>     3. Linking the compiler and a number of cool features (see the slides)
>     4. A macro which write macros to scrap all the bolierpolate code for
> generic programming, now you can customize your deriving stuff  in ten
> lines (previously thousands of lines of code to write camlp4 plugin)
>      5. A number of mini-DSLs  and more to be expected
>     I love macros, I would commit to the project for a long
> time(probably my Ph.D term), I promise that I would write the
> documentation to make users happy( I am also writing a book about
> macros, it's un-readable though). And I am really happy to co-laborate
> with anyone who love camlp4.
>     Syntax matters, if you see that coffescript is now already a
> success, camlp4 or Fan is actually more expressive than that, Dear ocaml
> programmers, let us find a way to make ocaml more beautiful. I am also
> open minded to any discussion about the future of camlp4
>     Many thanks (sorry for my bad English)
> --
> Regards
> -- Bob