Re: [Caml-list] Re: Arithmetic operations

[Gabriel Scherer <gabriel.scherer@gmail.com>]

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Just a quick clarification :

Sylvain has been doing great work for the OCaml community for some years.
> With the help of other tools (ocamlfind, godi, ocamlbuild...), the Ocamlcore
> Forge, etc., it is now more and more easy to use, share and deploy OCaml
> code.
>

My wording awkwardly suggests that all the mentioned tools are Ocamlcore
projects. This is not true :
- ocamlfind and godi are tools from Gerd Stolpmann and have been around for
much longer; if you want to help the ocaml ecosystem, it's a good idea to
begin by writing META files for all your released projects; they are very
simple to write from an existing example, and very useful in combination
with ocamlfind
- ocamlbuild is from Nicolas Pouillard and Berke Durak; it is a simple and
extensible compilation system for OCaml, but relatively new; other build
systems for OCaml exist, such as OCamlMakefile (a generic GNU Makefile to
help write usual makefiles for OCaml program) and OMake.


On Thu, Mar 31, 2011 at 2:19 PM, Gabriel Scherer
<gabriel.scherer@gmail.com>wrote:

> 2011/3/31 Philippe Strauss <philou@philou.ch>
>
>> So, I think INRIA could continue to work on a good compiler, and company
>> which make business whith ocaml could discuss between them to agreed on
>> standards, via Ocamlcore for instance, with the agreement of Xavier Leroy's
>> team of course.
>>
>
> Xavier Leroy has already said, for example during the former OCaml
> Meetings, that they would be happy to link to a more complete "OCaml
> distribution" provided by the community, including the core "INRIA lib" and
> some more. I think there is no clear consensus right now on what that would
> be, and that's why it hasn't been done yet, but there are several orthogonal
> efforts in that direction (more on that later).
>
>
> 2011/3/31 Philippe Strauss <philou@philou.ch>
>
>> maybe batteries and janestreet core (to name nowadays alternatives) have
>> too big ambitions: extension library aside INRIA's standard lib would have
>> more users than a complete alternative.
>>
> [...]
>>
> I think it would be important and interesting to create a little
>> organization which discuss bout a standard lib and would begin making a
>> synthesis of all these "standard" library.
>>
>
> Batteries is meant to be an extension of INRIA's stdlib, as a continuation
> of the [Extlib] effort. Great care is taken that a code using the existing
> standard library should be able to replace it with Batteries without
> changing a line of code. If something breaks when converting to batteries,
> it should be filed as a bug.
>
>  [Extlib] http://code.google.com/p/ocaml-extlib/
>
> The Core library from Jane Street has liberated itself from this
> conservative position. Programs should be written directly using Core, and
> it is not in principle easy to transition from INRIA's stdlib to Core (of
> course you could include both and be careful to avoid conflicts with
> "open"). The advantages are plenty: it allows Janestreet to provide a
> coherent set of packages and make different design choices (arguably some
> aspects of INRIA's stdlib are more "non choices"). On the other hand, it
> means that direct "synthesis" of both efforts (Core and Batteries) is not
> likely. There is also the difference that Batteries is a community-driven
> effort, while Core is more internal to Jane Street; they would probably
> welcome contributions, but their internal code is naturally their top
> priority, and the external release model has been rather sporadic for now.
>
>
> Le 31 mars 2011 à 10:19, Pierre-Alexandre Voye:
>
>> I think it would be important and interesting to create a little
>> organization which discuss bout a standard lib and would begin making a
>> synthesis of all these "standard" library.
>>
>
> After the first OCaml Meeting, there has been some discussion on the Cocan
> Wiki, but I think the site is down currently.
>
> http://le-gall.net/sylvain+violaine/blog/index.php?post/2008/01/30/36-ocamlmeeting-in-paris-debian-summary
>
>
> 2011/3/31 Philippe Strauss <philou@philou.ch>
>
>> the way you can get haskell packaged easily, on the contrary, as some big
>> appeal.
>
>
> Sylvain Le Gall has been working on a CPAN-like repository for OCaml, using
> his "oasis" distribution tool:
>    http://oasis.forge.ocamlcore.org/oasis-db.html
>
> Sylvain has been doing great work for the OCaml community for some years.
> With the help of other tools (ocamlfind, godi, ocamlbuild...), the Ocamlcore
> Forge, etc., it is now more and more easy to use, share and deploy OCaml
> code. Of course, there still are a lot of rough edges, but the only way to
> go further is that the community (yes, you!) try to use those tools,
> popularize them, and also report feedback on what could be improved.
>
> For a very long time, using OCaml has been a joyful but solitary activity.
> If you want a more vibrant community, the only thing to do is to do your
> part of the work as you would need the others to do. Set a standard, so that
> things that are now rare are taken for granted in the future. Nobody, except
> maybe Sylvain, has the devotion to work full-time on the small details that
> will improve things in the long run, and this is ok. Yes, writing an oasis
> file (or even a META) or contributing an obvious function to Batteries is
> tedious and certainly less sexy that a lot of things you're working on. But
> this won't happen magically.
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Mar 31, 2011 at 11:38 AM, Pierre-Alexandre Voye <
> ontologiae@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> 2011/3/31 Philippe Strauss <philou@philou.ch>
>>
>>>
>>> Le 31 mars 2011 à 10:19, Pierre-Alexandre Voye a écrit :
>>>
>>> It's funny, because I'm studying why language succeed or not, for my M1
>>> dissertation (M1 Management), and it's one of the big factor, among others,
>>> of sucess.
>>> Ocaml is highly expressive, so you could turn around, but it's a big
>>> problem.
>>>
>>> I think it would be important and interesting to create a little
>>> organization which discuss bout a standard lib and would begin making a
>>> synthesis of all these "standard" library.
>>>
>>>
>>> Personally I'm not that unhappy with the standard lib shipped by INRIA.
>>>
>>> maybe batteries and janestreet core (to name nowadays alternatives) have
>>> too big ambitions: extension library aside INRIA's standard lib would have
>>> more users than a complete alternative.
>>>
>>> the way you can get haskell packaged easily, on the contrary, as some big
>>> appeal.
>>>
>>>
>>> I think INRIA, and in particular the Xavier Leroy's team, make what they
>> can. Their work isn't to maintain OCaml but mainly to do research.
>> So, I think INRIA could continue to work on a good compiler, and company
>> which make business whith ocaml could discuss between them to agreed on
>> standards, via Ocamlcore for instance, with the agreement of Xavier Leroy's
>> team of course.
>>
>>
>> --
>> ---------------------
>> Isaac Project - http://www.lisaac.org/
>>
>
>

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