[Caml-list] Call for collaboration on the future of camlp4

[bob zhang <bobzhang1988@gmail.com>]

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Dear OCaml programmers,
   Last week, I give a talk about the future of Camlp4 in the ML workshop,
the slides are here
http://www.lexifi.com/ml2012/slides_panel_hongbo.pdf(some are already
done, some are work in progress).
   For a long time, in the caml community, thanks to the talented work of
Daniel and Michel,  we know there is a very very powerful tool called
*camlp4*, if there are some bolierpolate code you write here and there,
someone will tell you "hey, you can do it in camlp4" though he may not know
how to do it in camlp4.
   But it's a bit embarassing that camlp4 did not evolve very well(partly
due to the fragmentation of camlp[4,5]), another fact is that camlp4 is not
*designed*, it's like a prototype that works but not carefully designed,
and it does not provide anything out of the box  and itself was written in
a verbose way.
   It's time to bring the powerful tool back, my advisor Steve and I
started a new project Fan, which is mainly to evolve the camlp4 macro
system to be more expressive and more powerful, push the Camlp4 to the next
level. For me, I am a long-term Lisp programmer, I appreciated the value of
macros, I would really be happy to see we could make a such powerful macro
systems.
   Here is my repo https://bitbucket.org/HongboZhang/camlp4
   I already finished some cool staff,  to mention just a few:
   1. A very robust bootstrapping system, previously it takes me 20 minutes
to ver*ify my patches to camlp4 can reach a fixpoint or not, but now you
can compile your modification within seconds, and reach a fixpoint under 2
minutes, this accelerate the development cycles immediately.*
*   2. Now you can customize your lexer now, previously it's impossible(
and a number of bug fixes) you can do deep anti-quotation like *
*  <:expr< <:expr< $($(deepantiquot)) >> >> *
   3. Linking the compiler and a number of cool features (see the slides)
   4. A macro which write macros to scrap all the bolierpolate code for
generic programming, now you can customize your deriving stuff  in ten
lines (previously thousands of lines of code to write camlp4 plugin)
    5. A number of mini-DSLs  and more to be expected
   I love macros, I would commit to the project for a long time(probably my
Ph.D term), I promise that I would write the documentation to make users
happy( I am also writing a book about macros, it's un-readable though). And
I am really happy to co-laborate with anyone who love camlp4.
   Syntax matters, if you see that coffescript is now already a success,
camlp4 or Fan is actually more expressive than that, Dear ocaml
programmers, let us find a way to make ocaml more beautiful. I am also open
minded to any discussion about the future of camlp4
   Many thanks (sorry for my bad English)
-- 
Regards
-- Bob

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