release of Caml Light version 0.6

release of Caml Light version 0.6

[Xavier Leroy]

The version 0.6 of the Caml Light system has been released.

It is available by anonymous FTP from:

    host:           ftp.inria.fr    (192.93.2.54)
    directory:      lang/caml-light

Summary of the files:

    README                  More detailed summary
    cl6unix.tar.Z           Unix version
    cl6macbin.sea.hqx       Binaries for the Macintosh version
    cl6macsrc.sea.hqx       Source code for the Macintosh version
    cl6pc386bin.zip         Binaries for the 80386 PC version
    cl6pc386src.zip         Source code for the 80386 PC version
    cl6pc86bin.zip          Binaries for the 8086 PC version
    cl6pc86src.zip          Source code for the 8086 PC version
    cl6refman.ps.Z          Reference manual, Postscript
    cl6refman.dvi.Z         Reference manual, DVI
    cl6refman.txt           Reference manual, plain text
    cl6refman.prn           Reference manual, plain text + underline & bold
    cl6tutorial.ps.Z        Tutorial, Postscript
    cl6tutorial.dvi.Z       Tutorial, DVI
    cl6tutorial.txt         Tutorial, plain text
    cl6tutorial.prn         Tutorial, plain text + underline & bold

The PC and Macintosh versions will soon be distributed on floppy disks
by INRIA. Before releasing Caml Light on floppy disks, we would
greatly appreciate if you could quickly download and test the
Macintosh or PC versions and report any problem encountered.

This release is mostly a bug-fix release and should be compatible with
Caml Light 0.5. Main changes:

* Better handling of type abbreviations.

* Debugging mode (option -g to camlc and camllight) to get access
  to the internals of module implementations.

* New library modules:
    genlex    generic lexical analyser
    set       applicative sets over ordered types
    map       applicative maps over ordered types
    baltree   balanced binary trees over ordered types

* "compile" command at toplevel (especially useful in the Macintosh version).

* New contributed libraries and tools:
    camlmode    Emacs editing mode for Caml Light
    mletags     Indexing of Caml Light source files for use with Emacs "tags"
    search_isos Search libraries by types (modulo isomorphisms)
    libgraph    X implementation of the portable graphics library
    libnum      Arbitrary-precision arithmetic
    libstr      String operations, regular expressions

* The 80386 PC version is now DPMI-compliant, hence it can run under Windows
  (in text mode inside a DOS windows and with no graphics, though).

* More examples, including those from the book "Le langage Caml".

The implementors can be contacted at caml-light@margaux.inria.fr.

General questions and comments of interest to the Caml community
should be sent to caml-list@margaux.inria.fr, the Caml mailing list.

Thank you for your attention.

- Xavier Leroy, Pierre Weis.

release of Caml Light version 0.6

[Christophe Raffalli]

Hello,

I tried Caml-Light 0.6 on macintosh. It works fine for me except few details:

	- You forgot to update the About Dialog which says it's 0.5 !!! 
	- You forgot the line "Set Echo 0" a the beginning of file camlc
	- libstr and libnum seems not availaible on the mac distribution. Are
          they available only on the UNIX version ?

Regards,
Christophe.

Re: release of Caml Light version 0.6

[Xavier Leroy]

> I tried Caml-Light 0.6 on macintosh. It works fine for me except few details:
> 
> 	- You forgot to update the About Dialog which says it's 0.5 !!! 
> 	- You forgot the line "Set Echo 0" a the beginning of file camlc

Thanks for the bug report. Those two will be corrected soon.

> 	- libstr and libnum seems not availaible on the mac distribution. Are
>           they available only on the UNIX version ?

The main problem is that the Macintosh version of Caml Light does not
have the -custom compiler option, nor the camlmktop command. Libraries
containing C code, such as libstr and libnum, are therefore useless.

This said, it wouldn't be too hard to have -custom and camlmktop
working on the Macintosh; it's just that we've assumed that few
Macintosh users have MPW. Let us (caml-light@margaux.inria.fr) know if
you are interested.

Otherwise, the libraries libstr and libnum from the Unix version
should be easy to port to the Macintosh. I did the port for a close
cousin of libnum and encountered few problems.

- Xavier Leroy

release of Caml Light version 0.6

[Christophe Raffalli]

I am quite interested to have the -custom option, this should be supported. 

Moreover, I have another wish (or dream) for further improvement of caml-light :

It is very easy to produce a stand-alone mac application with caml-light: you
just need to replace the data-fork of the caml-light application (I try it, it
works). The only problem: you can't use the libgraph library (It should work
with the -custom option ?).

I think it needs few work to support this kind of production of stand-alone
application even without MPW. (you just need a link command in caml-light,
which should duplicate the resource fork of the application with a new
data-fork produced by the link command. On each archictecture, this command
should create an executable stand-alone application).

Then if you write a Make function in caml-light, you no more need MPW (but,
you need portable functions to acces date of file) ! 

And to be even nicer, you add some functions to customize a little the menu of
the caml-light application ! (but this won't be portable, so it's perhaps not
so good).

Christophe