Re: [Caml-list] How to refactor a large Ocaml program

[Jan Rehders <cmdkeen@gmx.de>]

Hi,

On 15. Dez 2006, at 08:49, Mattias Waldau wrote:
> A nice thing would be to be able to navigate the program, i.e.
>
> 1. Goto to definition (Ctrl-B in Visual Studio)

This is possible with Otags

On the utility of a refactoring tool: I believe it would be very  
useful in OCaml. It doesn't matter that much whether a language is  
expressive or not, tools doing repetitive  work are always a great  
relieve. Imagine changing the signature of a function in a module  
type which is realized by several modules which in turn are used all  
around the program. You don't need bad code to save much time here if  
the name change is done by a tool in seconds instead of by a  
programmer in minutes or hours. Apart from that an "extract  
method"/"pull up let expression" refactoring would be especially  
useful in OCaml where one uses nested "let" expressions often. I find  
myself pulling a local function up a level frequently.

There is a huge gap between tools which are aware of the program  
structure and those who are not. Take a language where such tools  
exist like Java: can anyone who ever got used to IDEA IntelliJ or  
Eclipse JDT going back to a simple text editor? I even prefer them  
over Emacs for Java coding. There is so much an IDE can provide if it  
can work on an AST of the language that you don't want to miss it.  
Not even in a language like OCaml. Searching references, changing  
names and structure etc. are things which can be done by the editor/ 
IDE. A powerful language can do much to improve programmers  
productivity but it will only reach it's full potential together with  
equally powerful tools - would anyone program OCaml in MS Notepad?

Has anyone tried adding OCaml support for Emacs semantic? This might  
be a starting point

-- Jan