Re: [Caml-list] Feedback wanted about the OCaml windows installer

[Romain Bardou <romain.bardou@inria.fr>]

On 21/08/2014 18:24, Jonathan Protzenko wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Following Damien's announcement of a new rc-candidate, I set out to
> refresh the OCaml installer for windows and realized that I could use
> some feedback.
> 
> The installer currently distributes:
> - ocaml, with native and bytecode compilers
> - flexlink
> - findlib
> - "ocamlwin", the infamous windows top-level,
> - camlp4
> - labltk
> 
> Please note that this is not enough to compile native programs, as an
> external assembly tool ("as") is required, so without any extras, the
> user can only use the top-level, and perform byte-code compilation.
> Please note that, even though labltk is distributed, run-time support
> libraries are needed for tk programs to run.
> 
> The installer currently:
> - offers the option of installing cygwin along with enough packages to
> have a working toolchain, including the "as" tool;
> - offers the option of downloading and setting up emacs, along with the
> official caml-mode, and setting up the right file associations (ml and
> mli) in the windows explorer;
> - offers the option of downloading activetcl to make sure tools such as
> ocamlbrowser and the labltk libraries work properly.
> 
> I am considering:
> - dropping "ocamlwin": it is old, buggy, and better replacements are now
> available;
> - optionally installing OCamlTop to provide a much-needed replacement
> for "ocamlwin";
> - dropping labltk along with the option for downloading activetcl: this
> requires extra effort on my side because it now is distributed as a
> separate project, and I suspect people who are serious about user
> interfaces are using lablgtk, but I'd be interested in hearing your
> opinion about this;
> - keeping camlp4 even though it moved off into a separate project
> - refreshing emacs to the latest version
> - bundling Merlin binaries so that they can be installed along with
> Emacs, if the user is so inclined.
> 
> I don't have a good understanding of the current user base of the
> installer; so if you're a user of this installer, I'd be interested in
> hearing your story. Is a good top-level important because you're in
> education? Have you ever used labltk? Are you proficient enough to
> download, say, odb (which, last time I checked, more or less worked on
> Windows), and install the missing packages yourself?
> 
> Looking forward to your comments,
> 
> ~ jonathan

Hello,

I’ve been using your installer for a few years now. It fits my use case
quite well and I thank you for that.

This use case is simple: I want to be able to produce standalone, native
win32 versions of my programs which are developed on Linux.

So basically, what's important for me is that it installs the toolchain
and the Cygwin environment. I do install Emacs for the occasional case
where I want to test a quick patch without transferring files from Linux
to Windows. I usually re-run the Cygwin installer to install Git and
SSH. The hard part is installing libraries. Then I use make, ocamlbuild,
ocamlfind, from the MinGW terminal.

On Windows I’ve never used labltk, ocamlwin, ocamltop, activetcl,
camlp4, Merlin, odb. I’ve used LablGTK and OcamlSDL, both being rather
tricky to install correctly. Other libraries are usually easier to
install as they contain less bindings, although sometimes they do
require some tweaks in the build process. Sometimes they have a lot of
dependencies for no good reason and without a package manager it can get
rather annoying — opam would probably help a lot here.

Soon I will need to produce 64bits executables as well.

Cheers,

-- 
Romain Bardou