Re: [Caml-list] ocamlbuild on Windows and bash vs. cmd

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

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> And I take this as a "yes" on the question if something like this would
be appreciated by the community.

This is my impression as well, and I would personally warmly welcome
changes to improve Windows users experience -- I think of ocamlbuild as a
portable build system, and I would like to work out of the box; I don't
think there are any fundamental design limitations that would prevent this
good portability experience.


One difficulty right now in term of development dynamics is that I don't
have a Windows machine to test on myself, so I'm rather conservative
regarding Windows-related changes to avoid regressions for non-Windows user
(it's not necessarily easy to predict which changes risk breaking stuff),
or even regressions for other Windows users (some of the non-intuitive
Windows-related code is there because otherwise stuff breaks for some
people). Sometimes Windows developers make a certain amount of changes that
look right to them and fix actual problems on their system, but then it's
hard for me to see what can be safely integrated (see for example
https://github.com/ocaml/ocamlbuild/pull/70 , whose low-hanging fruits I
could merge quickly, but for the rest I worry of regressions ).

To solve that problem we need a better testing infrastructure for
ocamlbuild, but also get more tests from Windows users to provide feedback
on other approaches or patches reworks, etc. If someone, for example you,
is willing to start a more persistent approach of iterative improvements
and tests, I think that things could improve rather quickly.

On Thu, Oct 6, 2016 at 10:15 AM, Soegtrop, Michael <
michael.soegtrop@intel.com> wrote:

> Dear Daniel,
>
> > See https://github.com/ocaml/ocamlbuild/issues/64
>
> yes, I have seen the discussion, especially the discussion if one should
> use cmd vs. removing the use of a shell by ocamlbuild entirely. I agree
> that the latter would be the better solution, but it would be a major
> change since currently ocamlbuild wraps everything through string commands.
> But maybe it is not as bad as it looks.
>
> And I take this as a "yes" on the question if something like this would be
> appreciated by the community.
>
> I am a bit in a hurry to get something working for Coq 8.6. I guess I
> first make a cmd based hack for Coq and then look into the real solution.
>
> I will continue the discussion on the ocamlbuild issue tracker item linked
> above.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Michael
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