From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from mail4-relais-sop.national.inria.fr (mail4-relais-sop.national.inria.fr [192.134.164.105]) by walapai.inria.fr (8.13.6/8.13.6) with ESMTP id pB69gLjh022633 for ; Tue, 6 Dec 2011 10:42:21 +0100 X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: As4BAFfi3U7RVaG2kGdsb2JhbABEmiyIFwGIDwgiAQEBAQkJDQcUBCGBcgEBAQMBEgIsARsSDAMBCwYFCxohIgERAQUBChIGExICBgiHZQiXZwqLZIJrhRw9iHECBQqDaIdABIJbhU2FCYc1jWw9g3o X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.71,304,1320620400"; d="scan'208";a="122197165" Received: from mail-gx0-f182.google.com ([209.85.161.182]) by mail4-smtp-sop.national.inria.fr with ESMTP/TLS/RC4-SHA; 06 Dec 2011 10:42:15 +0100 Received: by ggnp1 with SMTP id p1so5259591ggn.27 for ; Tue, 06 Dec 2011 01:42:14 -0800 (PST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=mime-version:in-reply-to:references:date:message-id:subject:from:to :content-type; bh=1Z7jinWOFHYRHcPJwKxW5Kth1UAvnkCaEVfMuS5lpD0=; b=uWgmuuyP571S/CkhOmZ2yhlfs18la22uG0XN6M0+N2BPGqYlSwks4LkhGV6MwWz9sY gLIkQOi9zsB7rkhwUrIw9In+yg50WkLLBDzhpIO7o36xe98lOZ8pBfbfNYCiJ4aOK9UG SYYvcn7UYJCU0qmKlfZ4VIxfmyq0t5EXJ/Asg= MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.50.104.137 with SMTP id ge9mr14041375igb.38.1323164534365; Tue, 06 Dec 2011 01:42:14 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.42.202.8 with HTTP; Tue, 6 Dec 2011 01:42:14 -0800 (PST) In-Reply-To: <1B0D83BD-1902-4F7C-B3FB-B759122D6AB9@googlemail.com> References: <1B0D83BD-1902-4F7C-B3FB-B759122D6AB9@googlemail.com> Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2011 12:42:14 +0300 Message-ID: From: Kakadu To: Caml List Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=e89a8f23585f0ce02904b369406c Subject: Re: [Caml-list] OCaml maintenance status / community fork --e89a8f23585f0ce02904b369406c Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Does anybody has news about OCamlPro? ----------------------------------------------------------- Kakadu On Tue, Dec 6, 2011 at 12:25 PM, Benedikt Meurer < benedikt.meurer@googlemail.com> wrote: > Dear caml-list, > > During the last year or two it seems that time and interest in OCaml > maintenance from the official OCaml development team is diminishing. It > takes several months to get a patch reviewed (if at all), which is quite > frustrating for OCaml contributors and even worse for OCaml users. I > suspect that this is one of the top reasons why there are only a few active > contributors to OCaml (and the number of active users, at least on the > mailing list, is declining). > > I understand that INRIA does not necessarily pay people for full time > maintenance jobs on OCaml (and Coq), and the official dev team is probably > already doing as much as possible to maintain OCaml. Given that OCaml is > such a nice language with a lot of useful frameworks available, it is too > sad to see it loosing ground just because of it's closed development > process and lack of time of the official team. > > I'd therefore propose to open up OCaml development to a wider range of > developers / contributors, to ensure that OCaml will be ready for the > (functional programming) future. There are already various "OCaml forks" in > the wild, with different goals and patch sets, so simply starting another > fork would be rather useless. Instead I'd suggest to bundle efforts in a > new "OCaml community fork", which is always based on the most recent > upstream OCaml release (starting point would be 3.12.1 for now), and takes > care to review and integrate pending patches as well as developing and > testing new features. Let's say we'd name the fork "OCaml-ng", then we'd > try to release a new patch set every month or two, based on the official > OCaml release, i.e. "ocaml-3.12.1+ng201112" and so on, to get early testing > and feedback (should work together closely with the Debian/Ubuntu/etc. > OCaml maintainers). > > With this process, OCaml upstream could merge (tested) patches from > OCaml-ng once they proved working in the wild, and thereby > > 1. maintenance overhead for INRIA people is reduced, > 2. maintenance status of OCaml would be way better, > 3. there would be a lot less frustration for possible contributors, and > 4. users benefit from a better and more up to date OCaml. > > Now that does of course raise a few questions: > > 1. What is the opinion of the official development team / INRIA on this? > 2. Who would help with the community fork? > 3. What about infrastructure? > > Feedback and suggestions are welcome. > > Benedikt > > -- > Caml-list mailing list. Subscription management and archives: > https://sympa-roc.inria.fr/wws/info/caml-list > Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners > Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs > > --e89a8f23585f0ce02904b369406c Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Does anybody has news about OCamlPro?



----------------------= -------------------------------------
Kakadu

On Tue, Dec 6, 2011 at 12:25 PM, Benedikt Meurer &= lt;benedikt.meurer@google= mail.com> wrote:
Dear caml-list,

During the last year or two it seems that time and interest in OCaml mainte= nance from the official OCaml development team is diminishing. It takes sev= eral months to get a patch reviewed (if at all), which is quite frustrating= for OCaml contributors and even worse for OCaml users. I suspect that this= is one of the top reasons why there are only a few active contributors to = OCaml (and the number of active users, at least on the mailing list, is dec= lining).

I understand that INRIA does not necessarily pay people for full time maint= enance jobs on OCaml (and Coq), and the official dev team is probably alrea= dy doing as much as possible to maintain OCaml. Given that OCaml is such a = nice language with a lot of useful frameworks available, it is too sad to s= ee it loosing ground just because of it's closed development process an= d lack of time of the official team.

I'd therefore propose to open up OCaml development to a wider range of = developers / contributors, to ensure that OCaml will be ready for the (func= tional programming) future. There are already various "OCaml forks&quo= t; in the wild, with different goals and patch sets, so simply starting ano= ther fork would be rather useless. Instead I'd suggest to bundle effort= s in a new "OCaml community fork", which is always based on the m= ost recent upstream OCaml release (starting point would be 3.12.1 for now),= and takes care to review and integrate pending patches as well as developi= ng and testing new features. Let's say we'd name the fork "OCa= ml-ng", then we'd try to release a new patch set every month or tw= o, based on the official OCaml release, i.e. "ocaml-3.12.1+ng201112&qu= ot; and so on, to get early testing and feedback (should work together clos= ely with the Debian/Ubuntu/etc. OCaml maintainers).

With this process, OCaml upstream could merge (tested) patches from OCaml-n= g once they proved working in the wild, and thereby

1. maintenance overhead for INRIA people is reduced,
2. maintenance status of OCaml would be way better,
3. there would be a lot less frustration for possible contributors, and
4. users benefit from a better and more up to date OCaml.

Now that does of course raise a few questions:

1. What is the opinion of the official development team / INRIA on this?
2. Who would help with the community fork?
3. What about infrastructure?

Feedback and suggestions are welcome.

Benedikt

--
Caml-list mailing list. =A0Subscription management and archives:
https://sympa-roc.inria.fr/wws/info/caml-list
Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners
Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs


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