[Caml-list] OCaml standard library: past, present, future

[Caml-list] OCaml standard library: past, present, future

[Jehan Pagès]

Hello all!

OCaml is evolving regularly. This is great. BUT basically what I see
over the years are mainly core evolutions.
Don't get me wrong, core evolutions are really good. Improving the
performance of the compiler, optimizations, the runtime, interesting
syntax evolutions, data structures, and so on. But what about the
slightly higher level? The standard library…

I know that the primary core developers of OCaml are scholars (INRIA).
And academic study of a language is nicel, I won't deny it. But
"practically", the more enjoyable languages are also ones with a good,
high quality, standard library coming with the rest of the language.
Language is not only syntax. So this is the part of OCaml that I miss
the most, because the provided default libraries are nice but miss
many utilities.

I know there are some projects of building such complete library out
there. I've heard at least of Batteries. I know also some companies
are working on improving OCaml. So when are at least part of these
libraries (the ones that the upstream core team consider high-quality
enough) included into the upstream distribution? Not all at a time,
but at least sometimes. Right now, there are nearly never any addition
to the upstream standard lib.

Thanks on any insight about how this specific aspect of OCaml will
evolve (if there is any plan of it)! :-)

Jehan

P.S.: I know that there are at each release bug fixes, improvements,
and sometimes additions of features in currently existing Modules. But
what I wonder is more when new Modules in the standard lib will be
added...

[Caml-list] Re: OCaml standard library: past, present, future

[Dawid Toton]

> I know there are some projects of building such complete library out
> there. I've heard at least of Batteries. I know also some companies
> are working on improving OCaml. So when are at least part of these
> libraries (the ones that the upstream core team consider high-quality
> enough) included into the upstream distribution?
So you want some libraries to be put in one tarball together with the 
compiler?
Why don't you like them packaged separately?

Dawid

Re: [Caml-list] Re: OCaml standard library: past, present, future

[Vincent Hanquez]

On Sun, Apr 10, 2011 at 09:27:12PM +0200, Dawid Toton wrote:
> 
> >I know there are some projects of building such complete library out
> >there. I've heard at least of Batteries. I know also some companies
> >are working on improving OCaml. So when are at least part of these
> >libraries (the ones that the upstream core team consider high-quality
> >enough) included into the upstream distribution?
> So you want some libraries to be put in one tarball together with
> the compiler?
> Why don't you like them packaged separately?

I think you're focused on the wrong thing here; the important bit is the standard.
how they get installed is probably irrevelant, the only thing is that there's
no such standard package to get ATM. shall i get Core ? batteries ?
then which other libraries are considered standard ?

The haskell platform is a good example of that. It's not bundled with the
compiler, yet they managed to setup a standard effort, where you have high
quality and coherent libraries.

-- 
Vincent

Re: [Caml-list] Re: OCaml standard library: past, present, future

[Andrei Formiga]

On Tue, Apr 12, 2011 at 7:58 AM, Vincent Hanquez <tab@snarc.org> wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 10, 2011 at 09:27:12PM +0200, Dawid Toton wrote:
>>
>> >I know there are some projects of building such complete library out
>> >there. I've heard at least of Batteries. I know also some companies
>> >are working on improving OCaml. So when are at least part of these
>> >libraries (the ones that the upstream core team consider high-quality
>> >enough) included into the upstream distribution?
>> So you want some libraries to be put in one tarball together with
>> the compiler?
>> Why don't you like them packaged separately?
>
> I think you're focused on the wrong thing here; the important bit is the standard.
> how they get installed is probably irrevelant, the only thing is that there's
> no such standard package to get ATM. shall i get Core ? batteries ?
> then which other libraries are considered standard ?
>
> The haskell platform is a good example of that. It's not bundled with the
> compiler, yet they managed to setup a standard effort, where you have high
> quality and coherent libraries.
>

The Haskell platform is a good comparison, because it's a community
effort. As far as I recall, INRIA's reasoning about the standard
library is that everything added to it must be maintained by them, and
they're not terribly interested in increasing the burden of OCaml
maintenance, being a research institution and all.

I think OCaml Batteries is the closest project we have in OCaml-land
to the Haskell Platform, and its goals include selecting and including
other libraries beyond what was called Extlib before.

-- 
[]s, Andrei Formiga