Re: [Caml-list] Working Group: the future of syntax extensions in OCaml, after camlp4

[Jacques Carette <carette@mcmaster.ca>]

On 13-01-24 12:08 PM, Alain Frisch wrote:
> On 01/24/2013 05:16 PM, rixed@happyleptic.org wrote:
>> Are we interrested here striclty in _pre_processing or is runtime code
>> generation also on topic?
>
> Runtime code generation, and meta-programming a la MetaOCaml are 
> indeed quite a different story, and they are not specifically in the 
> scope of the working group.  I can imagine that some outcomes of this 
> de-camlp4-ifcation might benefit to such projects, though.  For 
> instance, a more liberal concrete syntax (with attributes/quotations) 
> might allow, say,  MetaOCaml, to use directly the official parser, 
> thus avoiding problems related to the fact that it currently needs a 
> custom parser. For instance, I guess that camlp4 extensions cannot be 
> directly used by MetaOCaml users (except if someone decided to port 
> Camlp4 to MetaOCaml). Discussions related to these syntactic aspects 
> are very much welcome in the new mailing list.

I was going to bring this up on the new mailing list, after waiting a 
bit for it to get populated.  I am glad that you intend to keep 
metaocaml-style metaprogramming as 'a different story', as it really is 
exactly that.

Note that the metocaml based on ocaml 3.09 did have a full camlp4 port 
(I did it), but it never worked for the 3.11 version (I tried and did 
not succeed).

Anyways, I've joined the new mailing list, and will participate in such 
a discussion over there.

Jacques