Re: [Caml-list] Some comments on recent discussions

[Andrei Formiga <andrei.formiga@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Dec 6, 2011 at 12:24 PM, Jonathan Protzenko
<jonathan.protzenko@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> = Improving the community =
>
> I think the main point of the discussion is to improve "the community". If
> we really want to improve OCaml as a whole, then I think we can put our
> efforts on better areas than patching the compiler.
>
> == Package management system ==
>
> The thing that's most needed is, imho, a package manager that works.
> Oasis-db looked very promising as far as I could tell, but Sylvain doesn't
> have as much time as he used to do. Instead of hacking on our pet projects
> (which is, I admit, very rewarding), maybe someone could step up and make
> Oasis-db happen. We don't have a single, unified answer to "what should I
> install to easily hack with OCaml?". What made Python, Perl, Haskell
> successful is the package management systems. How much longer are we going
> to shy away from this issue? Sure, it's much more fun to hack on the
> compiler. Not as useful.
>

I think a good package system (with associated repository) and better
documentation are the two biggest things that can help OCaml's
adoption. It's true that there are languages that have become
successful without a package management system, but it has become
increasingly expected that languages have one. OCaml does not have
marketing or hype, so it has to win over new users by not creating
barriers to adoption. Plus it's much easier to work on a daily basis,
even for veterans. This is already true with GODI, which saves me a
lot of time when the library I need to install is available in its
repo.

The question is: what should be done? What must be done to enable
OASIS-DB? Or should everyone adopt GODI? What's the situation between
these two systems? Maybe having some kind of rough roadmap would help
there.

Regarding documentation, this is a problem in many fronts, beginning
with the book situation. Practical OCaml was a good idea, badly
executed. And Jason Hicks' fine book is probably stuck in limbo
because of legal battles and so it never came out. I recently had a
look at the Go language from Google, and the "A Tour of Go" tutorial
is very good (at http://tour.golang.org/ ). Maybe something similar
for OCaml would be a nice addition, especially given that the OCaml
Tutorial is apparently MIA. But I think having a good package manager
should come first (btw, Go has one).



-- 
[]s, Andrei Formiga